My friend Jean Wright-Elson suggested that I take a look at the cherry blossoms

in the Japanese Tea Garden in Balboa Park.  Today I did just that.

On my way to the Museum of Photographic Arts I pointed my camera

down into the newly opened Japanese Tea Garden toward the cherry trees…

and I remembered something I wrote that I came across back in that 1990 book.

I found that again today.

My Soul is a Bird

My soul is a bird that soars above all this stuff

that clogs the arteries and plugs access

to the sweetness promised by those cherry blossoms

I saw this morning in the golden sun beside the red barn.

High above even the great oaks in the meadow yonder

it circles and dives and catches the breeze off the ocean

to climb high again to dive again.

My soul sees from there the green and happy fields

stretching clear to the mountains under the sky

where my first love came and went

like the rainbow after a spring shower.

Riding the wind my soul has no enemies,

but there is risk coming back to earth

perched even on the highest branch

of the sycamore tree by the stream in the meadow.

Tuesday, March 13, 1990