Standing Under a Cherry Tree at Night

The cherry branches sway ... they are arms that prophesy music, hands that follow the note just about to come. The clumps of blossoms look heavily down, and are women’s faces, not angry with us, who forgive and return petals to the earth. And I too sway like these boughs, as if in heavy canyons, hardly making ground, moving upstream against tiny cedar twigs being turned over and over in the cloudy spring river coming down.

All day I walked by the sea! I climbed down the cliffs at times to sit with the black mussels. Finally, I am back here, in the garden, where the night air is affectionate, the stars are a transparent mountain range ... and I am a human being standing in the dark, looking at the cherry branches above him swaying against the night sky not far from the sea!