The Transience of the Blossoms

It comes once a year, a few days time,

It blooms and it falls,

It scatters at its toll.

Like the transience of human life, a fleeting beauty.

I watched as one petal fall from the other,

I watched as it dances, with each mellow sound.

Still it answers to the winds intricate calling,

Because it already knew that it was an ephemeral old spell.

Author's Note

物の哀れ (Mono no Aware) meaning an empathy towards things. It is a Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence, or transience of things.

I wanted to write about the Cherry Blossom's fleeting life which resembled a human's fragility. In Japan, cherry blossoms symbolize clouds due to their nature of blooming all together, besides being an enduring metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

I'm very much aware (& love) cherry blossoms as symbolic of what's shared in your author's note (good to provide background info). I love the idea of honoring impermanence, which is illustrated by your word choices & glimpses into both nature & human nature thru-out your message. Some of your descriptions could be pumped up to reflect an even more floating, graceful, sensory effect by including uniquely-described colors & textures & words like "fluttering" & "tumbling" that remind us of what the scene looks like.