[137 words]
I. plum blossom winter
moonish, midnight flesh
swollen with frost,
the plum blooms melodramatic—
starling’s cosmos, the scythe,
bleeding torment
a knobby, ragged protector,
made to ward against the dark,
trembling beneath winter’s hand,
sacrifices spent limbs to grow
rages past shards of frost
II. cherry blossom winter
bright-sweet,
sings a pink trumpet at dawn,
abundant in twos and threes,
having sheltered from the storm—
cherry arrives: a bomb,
murmurs ‘pretty please’
fragile, coquettish, impermanent,
naive to late-come freezes
III. hanami season
the plum tree holds my hand,
whispers its omens
while the pink cherry sways
on fragile, untried toes
i call them red-gutted,
vaguely heart-shaped,
watch them preen for the light
and I, with blade waiting,
write this poem
just to say:
the difference between
a harbinger and a herald
is how they meet the blade
Shannon Cates, a UX designer living in Annapolis, Maryland, finds comfort in rainy days and the written word. When not crafting digital experiences, she’s immersed in poetry, often with her cat by her side. Her work has been published in Humana Obscura, Emerge Literary Journal, and Bodega Magazine among other journals.
