We are cherry blossoms

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