Can We Still Be Good Enough

Can we still be good enough?

Even after the dogwood falls?

I notice the dogwoods and cannot help but think of death.

I cannot see a dogwood without thinking of all the branches I’ve pruned in hopes of breaking

through enough of the opaque canopy to see the sun.

I don’t mourn the wrenched limbs—

I pity myself the fruitless labor.

No sun to see,

Obscuria is the temporal incantation man and nature conspire to hex me with:

I see a dogwood bloom and think of what only to me could initialize its imminent death,

Decay and desiccation.

Gnarled and softly bleeding white petals that flutter amongst the dense earth that is simultaneously

hardened from winter and soaked through by the proximity of spring’s full climax.

Maybe each drooping petal,

Each floating speck,

Is a remnant of the millions of little deaths that result in such revolution:

Something from the nothing, destined to surely return to nothing.