You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
—Alain de Botton
Perhaps they are not beautiful, the choke
cherry bushes all a-blossoming
beside the road. I never used to think
much of their drooping blooms all flopping, moping,
sagging from the limbs like limp white notes
gone flaccid falling off their staffs. And when
out strolling, no one sniffs the air and thinks
oh! the chokecherries! how sweet the odor!
No. But maybe it’s because I’m aging,
maybe cause I’m sagging, too, or maybe
cause life’s walloped me this year, I ran
today from bush to bush and plunged my face
in clumps of bloom and breathed them in, inhaling
bliss, white petals cradled in my hands.
Good sonneting, if that can be a word. And the title sounds so Petrarchan.
But you must realize that chokecherry jelly is a sonnet in a jar.
aaahhh, yes…the miracle already happening…
From Kathleen Dean Moore’s, essay, “Suddenly There Was with the Angel,” from, _Wild Comfort: The solace of nature_: “I’m thinking it’s a paltry sense of wonder that requires something new every day.”
And, from granduncle Willie’s, _The Merchant of Venice_: “…[I]n the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”