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Waxing Poetic on Cherry Blossoms
Wx and the City
* March Exits Like a Lamb: Full Forecast | Cherry Blossom Guide *
Cherry blossoms, just beginning to bloom, frame the Jefferson Memorial on Friday. By CWG photographer Ian Livingston.
Spring speaks to me of poetry. In the spirit of celebrating Japanese culture and springtime, here are a few cherry blossom-related poems. As always, feel free to express your appreciation of the season -- and other views you may have -- in poetry or prose in the comments section below.
Examples of Japanese sakura (cherry blossom) poems and a humorous haiku from a D.C. tourist:
Looking at the Mountain Sakura in mist
I miss a person who looks at the Sakura
--Kino Tsurayuki (source)
Keep reading for more cherry blossom poems, including a few of my own...
If there were no cherry blossoms in the world,
My mind would be peaceful.
--Fujiwara Norihira (source)
Sleeping under the trees on Yoshino mountain
The spring breeze wearing Cherry blossom petals
--Saigyo (source)
Washington
Looking for cherry blossoms
Bumper to bumper
--Stefan Waanders, D.C. tourist from the Netherlands (source)
And, staying true to my own love of haiku, here are a few poems of my own, as inspiration for you:
Ah, Yoshino trees
Against a divine blue sky,
Artistic wonder
Cherry blossoms bloom
Earlier every year:
Climate is changing.
Please, sky, do not rain
On our cherry tree parade
Again this year. Thanks!
I haiku-for-you
About weather and nature...
Haiku for me too?
By
Ann Posegate
| March 31, 2009; 10:30 AM ET
Categories:
Cherry Blossoms, Nature, Posegate, Wx and the City
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Posted by: eheadwest | March 31, 2009 11:28 AM | Report abuse
No place to park at Metro station or Tidal Basin
Can't walk too far, so no blossoms for me
Posted by: flyaway47 | March 31, 2009 12:54 PM | Report abuse
I posted Chaucer's opening lines from Canterbury Tales below.
I believe the modern English of the first part of Chaucer's poem involve April's "sweet" [soote] showers banishing the dryness [droghte] of March. There's then a passage involving grasses and flowers taking up the sweet "liquor", whereupon Chaucer remarks that this is the time when lusty young men and ladies throughout "merrie" England take it upon themselves to undertake the pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. This pilgrimage was one of several notable pilgrimages made by religious men and women throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. Others involved the pilgrimage to the holy sites in Rome, the pilgrimage to the church of St. James [Santiago] at Compostela in Spain, and the longest, most difficult of all, the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The Crusades were originally a response to restrictions and taxes imposed on Christian pilgrims by Muslims while such pilgrims visited the holy sites around Jerusalem. Incidentally one reason the Middle East converted largely to Islam in the first place was due largely to the fact that the Islamic caliphs offered a lower tax burden to residents of Jerusalem than their Byzantine Christian predecessors had done!
Posted by: Bombo47jea | March 31, 2009 1:18 PM | Report abuse
The white of the blossoms overhead
drifting blossoms like snow
Pollen blowing everywhere
Nose needs to blow
Posted by: epjd | March 31, 2009 3:53 PM | Report abuse
Fleeting fields of pink
Hope springs eternal once more
Enjoy them while they last
Posted by: SSMD1 | March 31, 2009 4:04 PM | Report abuse
Tree's spring time blessing
delicate blossom petals
nature's confetti
Posted by: nbrad | April 2, 2009 4:44 PM | Report abuse
The comments to this entry are closed.
Warm one day and cold the next, must be spring time.
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