Blackbird and a Cherry Tree

For Helena The blackbird flings a cherry over a wing and leaps into the wind's sliding arc toward the platinum sheen of the North sea. There will be cherries, blueberries and more for a blackbird under dishwater skies on a day such as this in early July. And days will pass like the blackbird's flight, leaving torn cherries on the wet flagstones and the seeds of certain half remembered days. But salvation lives in the forgetting, or the sad goodbye of a cherry tree would be more than a simple man could bear. More birds arrive to strut on tired branches, but none with the blackbird's silicone glare. They come and go--- a witless traffic. Then I see you in a blue velvet robe on the verandah of the yellow house, and the day swings open--- an unstuck door.

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