As prickly as sometimes you claim you are,
My sweetmeat pear,
I know now we were wrong –
You are no cactus, thorned and difficult.
You are a cherry blossom.
Feminine, tinged pale and pink,
Lovely as a spring day
With wind shaking silken petals like snow.
Transient too, blooming and then disappearing,
Clouds of delicacy and exquisite affection,
Seen only for a moment, a day; a perfect hope,
Never quite enduring, precious and fleeting as life.
In Vancouver, BC and Washington DC,
Kyoto and Palawan, open mouthed tourists gape
Like I do, each ephemeral season of you:
Such beauty, such light.
eleanor j jackson 