Sakura.

The tone of nature is related to what human beings call "grief". What Lucretius called "the tears of things", what in Japanese poetry is called "mono no aware", the slender sadness. Robert Bly.

The cherry trees are in blossom in a neighbor's yard, high on a south facing slope, and they buzz with bees. Down at the bottom of the hill we wait hopefully in our shady clearing for this miracle to wander into our yard.

Miracle? Its all a matter of perspective. Does Spring, which comes every year, class as something amazing, something to notice and to celebrate? I would guess that it would be possible to not really notice Spring, - the cherry blossoms - , but because I went and photographed them this morning with careful intent I feel that have communed with them, given them my attention, and have received something in return.

The Japanese celebrate Sakura to make special note of cherry blossom time and think of it as a slender sadness. Such fresh beauty for so brief a time, like our own lives which seem so long from some perspectives but, as the poets point out, are as brief as a candle's flame. To celebrate Sakura is to incorporate impermanence into our understanding of our lives.

The bright cherry blossom is part of our lives this Spring. How beautiful, how precious!

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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my three score years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

AE Housman

when cherry blossoms
scatter...
no regrets

Issa