That they return to us each year

from the interior, from the

mute, iced-over selves of winter trees.

 

That they return to us:

deep feelings infusing

the avenue. Women, men

 

walking beneath boughs,

inadvertently inhale,

look up

 

at their perfection which is a kind

of meditation, each blossom

an atom of softest cloud.

 

A mass, a profusion, blooms

overwhelm the vision, saturate

the eyes until lids close, let the nostrils

 

make sense of the spectacle, grasp

the perfume, powdery and porous,

an intense, forgotten pleasure.

 

That this phenomenon called

spring could summon the honey

of the human heart to flow

 

upward, a golden wave

clouding the calculating brain,

overriding, that instant,

 

all pain, guilt, sorrow,

that is the power we call

miracle.