Fairer Still

Fair are the meadows. Fairer still the woodland, clothed in the blooming garb of spring.

Over two hours today in the car.
None of it wasted.

Friends! The dogwoods are white.
The redbuds lavender.
Some trees have a sheen of viper green.

The open fields a swath of rich green.
The peaches pink,
The forsythia yellow,
The cherries white with pink tinge.

I drove, fighting tears,
With the sun illuminating it all.
Jadon read Housman.

“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom upon the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride,
Wearing white for Eastertide.

“Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

“And since to look at things in bloom,
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.”

And Abraham said,
“Now I have a new appreciation for cherries.”

As art illuminates anew
What was already there, just waiting
To be seen.