Spring Blossoms

So many of the spring blossoms that I have admired and photographed are already gone.  It's happening so fast right now, spring.  Nearly every day I notice something new awakening.  I take pictures of the blooms, even when the lighting is poor, and the rain is threatening, because I know they may be gone before I get back to them.  

I take pictures.  I smell them.  I imagine them in vases, but I don't cut them.  

I want to share them, even when I can't think of anything witty to say.  Even when my photography is predictable.  

Even when the photo fails to evoke the bright wet way they glow for a few short days, dispelling winter, making it hard to be inside.  

I consider learning to make still frame photography, just so I can really see it happen, this blooming.

Maybe it's because I will be moving away from them, and will likely never again stand with my face inches from their's at this exact space, trying to memorize their scent, that I feel like I need to preserve them here, when I know what I'm preserving is a shadow and next year's blossoms will be out there.  The same blooms, different plants, but better because they are real.

I google poems about spring, to see how artists preserve the spring in words.  

Spring is like a perhaps hand

by E. E. Cummings, 1923

          

Spring is like a perhaps hand 

(which comes carefully 

out of Nowhere) arranging 

a window,into which people look (while 

people stare

arranging and changing placing 

carefully there a strange 

thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps 

Hand in a window 

(carefully to 

and fro moving New and 

Old things,while 

people stare carefully 

moving a perhaps 

fraction of flower here placing 

an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything.

I want to lay down in them, but I don't want to get my pants wet.  

Hello, friend.  

The first invaders arrive.  This spring, a dozen bush honeysuckle sprouts in the flower bed. How did you get here?  Spring time sacrifices.

The wild cherry tree that Brandon and his dad harvested for our yard.  Not a dogwood, after all.  How could I have this tree all these years and never notice these pink leaf-like bracts before?  Surprises every spring.  

Talk about edible bounty, the ice cream truck went by yesterday for the fist time that I've noticed, and at 8 pm even.  It's the season of evening ice cream delivery. ha!