Cherry

by Kim Philley

What is beautiful is often lost
Wept the cherry blossom trees throughout their
One significant gesture.

A skinflint’s extravagance is short-lived,
Mother warned. He’ll take you out to supper
Once.

The trees cried through the night
And in the dawn, afloat the grey water,
There, said the gay petals, there, there.

 

Kim Philley was born in Singapore in 1978 and grew up in Indonesia, Thailand, and Virginia. She now lives in Idaho and Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is a Henry Hoyns Fellow. (4/2006)