Sakura

In the midst of a lockdown, a promenade of Japanese cherry trees lines a walkway on the south side of the university library. Friday they were at what is traditionally considered the most beautiful and poignant moment of their cycle--in full bloom, but the petals just beginning to fall:  the glory of the perfect, present moment bound intrinsically to the impermanence of all things. 

It was my third pilgrimage in a week. They'd lasted longer for the cool, mostly dry weather, and they escaped damage a few nights earlier when the temperature dipped significantly below freezing and we woke to three inches of snow.

And beneath them, several dozen people wandering through the miracle, looking up in delight, taking photographs--of the trees, of one other standing beneath them. Almost all of them masked, all careful to stay distanced, strangers immersed together in a communal moment of deep joy, despite the anxieties of present circumstance. Themselves part of this transient and inexhaustible beauty, themselves subject to the precarity of all things, and all the more precious for it.