Each one of your luminous,

definitive petals

etched with the rising sun

still greet me in the morning.

You drink the early sunlight before any of

the tallest and oldest trees

know it has arrived:

late Spring breakfast.

Soon your petals scatter:

a blanket of pink youth is shed.

Your fruit grows, ripens and falls

to the sidewalk,

a cycle that seems instantaneous

once I noticed your berries

crushed beneath my shoes, again.

Your hard bark I touch

with my youthful fingertips.

It all chips away.

Ashes still crumbling in my palms,

I blow them away

and wish to be noticed;

to be touched;

that my coarse fears could be crumbled, too.

I pick the last berry left in winter—

seasoned and crimson,

and throw it high over telephone wires,

just to see if it will go that high

And never come back.