Sakura; 2015
The petals fall so easily from the branches, not withstanding even a little breeze. They tangle in our hairs, matt them, and most of us don’t seem to mind. The flowers still smell sweet.
Sometimes.
The bright pink hues are drained by the rain. The moist, white petals cover the roads, and the smell isn’t sweet any more. The bark is black and hard, wet mostly. From the rain.
The temples look ever grand and holy with the Sakura looming over them in the springtime. Soft pink petals settle on the shelter over the temizuyas, the ground around, and the wind takes them farther out and away – petals blessed by the temple gods, leaving the shrines to bring fortune to other places.
With the whitewashed trees and the blackened bark and the wet stones, they seem haunted. Mere shells of the shrines they once were.
In a cup on the ground the collected rain becomes turbid. It fell through the White Sakura, and the petals fell with it. They should remember when the Sakura is pale the petals fall.
In the city it’s hard to notice. There aren’t so many Sakura there. And people don’t bother about it very much.
There’s no need to.
But I don’t think of the city too much. There’s little place for a tree there. The moist black bark and the clear petals are too frail to survive there anyway. The people have their masks, but the tree doesn’t have anything save its bark.
The leaves are overlooked most of the time, but they’re there. Lingering and waiting for all the white petals to fall with the rain before the start of winter. It’s funny in a way because they end up falling too.
During the night you can’t see the pale petals and the black bark because everything’s black at night. I still admire the pale Sakura, but only in the deep dark night, when the lights are off and the birds are silent and the night is still with the falling of petals.
Pale, colourless petals.
