The epoch of the apple blossom's gone
'What, man? A few confetti days in May?
Hardly an antediluvian era,' you say.
How might I convince you? You're quite wrong.
Those few days, yes, but resonant in time,
they hollow out the caverns of birdsong
and melt the very skeleton that stands
within me yet to see, to touch, to breathe.
Each year renewed with bud-pushed freshness
yet ever more ring-ancient as I age
till mind (the apparitor of history) strays
within the winding horn of evolution
and one spring morning's half-opened petal cups
cannot contain the feelings they engender.
The Oldfather gapes to witness grand-sprogs
at the wrong end of a telescope, it first seems,
yet they're here, selved and selving, loud, demanding;
so in some sense it is with blossom too
except what they demand is all within - expression -
that we look into that mirror of time and smile
and laugh and breathe confusion deeply, cry -
the nursemaid bees can do their busy rest;
then confetti days must come indeed, too soon
when petals strew white wakes beneath the moon.
