April is for Castaway Pink

Three Sakura Poems and a Pegasus

I’m adding one new horse to my Artweaver herd every month this year, and April could only be one creature for me—a Sakura Pegasus!

Over a decade ago, I had the chance to live in Japan for about a year and a half. Before then, I’d never experienced anything remotely like the beauty of “hanami,” which is “flower-viewing” season.

In the far southern island of Kyushu I marveled at the cycles of plum, peach, and finally, sakura blossoms.

And I wrote a poem about the mysterious way that falling cherry blossoms seared even the most mundane details of the world around them with a fragile, pristine aura—

Sakura Fall

The inherent simplicity
Of sakura beauty lies not in
The form of the cherry tree,
But in how each branch
Loses its petals—

Pervasions of blushing wings
Floating miles down river canals,
Banking mud in pink jade,
Or choking gullies with
Shining star heaps.

Flurries of snow white
Without cold lending asphalt
The softness of spring,
The illusion of a clean
New thing.

When the sakura groves bloom,
It’s as if all the world is crying
April tears without water.
As the wind undoes their
Scented crowns, I wish

I could learn to let
So easily go—
Cast away shade
With the grace
Of sakura.

The city of Fukuoka was truly splendiferous to behold during cherry blossom season! I’ll always be grateful that I got to wander among these ephemeral glades for a brief span of my lifetime.

Twilight in Japan

Pink silk stars by night

Cluster in bright tears to trees

Sakura falling.

Where I live now, April is not a month for soft pink delights. If I want cherry blossoms, I must create them myself! With a little help from marbles and thrifted glass petals, of course . . .

Sakura Wish

April laughed in snow.

I dropped a sakura wish,

Dreaming of pink gems. 

P.S. Special thanks to Sadie for sending me these lovely cherry blossom stickers all the way from Japan this spring! I adore them.

*If you wish to support my ink, peruse and perchance purchase a tale.

Source:

“Sakura Fall.” (May 2016). Fresh Ink, 47, 23.