SAKURA
We are cherry blossoms
Soft and beautiful
Open wide to the sun
For a moment
And we are gone
One blossom of many
On one tree of many
In one season of many
Swirling slow on the wind
Kissing the ground
Joining forever
And our names and words and deeds
Are swept away
Mourned perhaps
But forgotten to time
Fallen blossoms from fallen trees
An allele on a chromosome
A footprint blown away
But that moment when we bloom-
That moment is forever
It is all, but it is all
And our beauty fills the universe
So I lift up my words
To mix in the eddies of human being
A note in an endless symphony
Crying out that I am
And I was
And it was good
That I lived a life
And touched the sun
Wrote and spoke and sang words
And told tales
And was in the tale
And in the song
And as my blossom floats toward the cold ground
My eyes will be fixed on the sky
I was
I am.
-Troy
D. Smith, 2013
