Day 636: White Blossoms

 

Have you noticed the cherry trees have begun to blossom? They're so magnificent when in bloom, extraordinary markers of the season bursting forth in our ordinary daily vistas, I can't understand why people don't leap in glee while passing them.

And the white ones, especially, look so lovely, so becoming and gracefully beautiful. I saw a huge one yesterday, sprawled and flowering full in a garden. To my surprise and delight, I noticed there was a bench underneath it. Now wouldn't that be something? To sit under it, admiring its blossoms from a supreme vantage point. I can't think of any sight more uplifting.

Although their fleeting beauty is reminiscent of transience in life, I think what cherry blossoms ('cheery' blossoms) say to us is to enjoy life, while it's in full bloom, while we have it. AE Housman, today again, echoes that sentiment here.
  
 

Loveliest of Trees, The Cherry Now - AE Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along 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.