Everyone feels grief when cherry blossoms scatter

I took a gentle walk over to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden on Monday to see the last of the spring blossom. It's always a bittersweet time of year but, as most of us know, life's deepest meanings and values are dependent upon learning to savour its taste. Anyway, I was put in mind of a well-known poem by Otomo no Juronushi (late 9th century) in which he finds a particularly beautiful way to speak about it:

Everyone feels grief
when cherry blossoms scatter.
Might they then be tears –
those drops of moisture falling
in the gentle rains of spring?

Photos taken with an iPhone6+ using the Filmborn app. Just click on a photo to enlarge it.

 

Blossom on Isaac Newton's apple tree