Cherry Blossoms

April 1st, 2023

We walked beneath the frosted flowers

That wither in the rain;

For Spring’s rebirth, their dying hour,

Their glory, and their pain,

Each year revives the sakurai

That die in bridal white;

Yoshino blooms against the sky

Consumed in their delight.

And by the tidal basin blue,

Where idle puddles ran

In languid loops, I followed you

And strove to understand

The quiet ache within my heart,

That gored but did not kill;

That foiled stratagem and art

And bound me to your will.

We walked beneath the monument,

That obelisk of stone

Raised up for ancient wars, and spent

The hours in talk alone

By fountained altars to the dead

At Normandy in France,

And Okinawa, where, its said

New armies will advance.

It was not beauty that transfixed

My long-encumbered nerves

Inured to pain, which know their wish,

Deserved, or undeserved,

Means little in the reckoning

Of what the other feels;

For longing, in its beckoning,

Grows tedious, and yields.

But you, with whom I share two wounds

The world cannot espy,

Would ask of me the things I loved,

And then would ask me “why?”

As if it weren’t the thing itself

Which merited your gaze,

But why I loved, and how I felt.

So you would learn my ways.

So I, you said, did not decieve

Nor obfuscate the truth

Of all the twisted subtleties

My heart holds as it’s ruth:

Long years enclosed within the ward;

Of pills, and scarring glass;

The desolation of my yard;

The heart grown old too fast.

And you, though still with self–command,

Receptive, and to all

The raving crowd’s debauched demands

Indifferent, and withal

Concerned with only natural good,

Nor status games, nor wealth,

Nor all this city’s idols, stood

And spoke no need of stealth.

So I recall, that day is past,

The wisdom of your words:

How unacknowledged pain is passed

By sufferers unheard

From heart to battered heart around

Unthinking in despair,

But wonder if I tilled the ground

With heartbreak, unaware.

Winter 2023