Nostalgia

Dating at 50 makes me nostalgic for youth, when everything was desperate, hormone driven and rather myopic passion. Now, there's performance anxiety, self-consciousness about a soft waistline, and real fear of loneliness. Here, square in the middle of Fall, just after the autumnal equinox, I wish it were Spring.

The Wild Cherries

The wild cherries are blooming
in heartbreaking profusion:
sudden pale pink in the
midst of burgundy birch buds
and bright green renewal of oaks.

The wild cherries are blooming.
Every turn in the winding road
not blurred by tears
is alive with floral hope
before blossoms drop like snow.

The wild cherries are blooming.
Gray polyglot mockingbirds sing,
hopeful for remnants of
last year's fruit still clinging
to the blood red branches.

The wild cherries are blooming:
again I am opening
and waiting and waiting,
a taste of spring mocking
my own autumn branches.