on spring
another haiku, plus thoughts on nature.
Ravens on white branches
Spring can’t reach
That high yet
But spring has been creeping into the semi-wilderness around my bike trail. There is a plant that always goes green first — I don’t know the name — and all along the sides they stand like rippling green flames in the drab. The flowering cherries (pears?) bloom in pink and white. By the time I notice, they have already transferred a carpet of fragmented color to the asphalt.
Other trees are dropping — have dropped — pollen capsules of one sort or another. At least I assume it’s pollen.
I feel as though traveling through a country where I only know a smattering of the language, because my knowledge of the landscape is so fragmented. Names of plants, birds — their origins — only a few that I know at a glance. (In contrast to my garden, where I know the precise cycle of flowering…if not always the exact plant names!)
On a bright afternoon like today, the wind is strong enough to force me slower, in a lower gear, and that’s not altogether a bad thing.
(I wrote this on the bus two days ago.)
