AUTHOR'S NOTE:

 

This poem was one of many that I wrote during my first spring living in Washington, DC—it was 2012—when the city was taken over by the annual blooming of the cherry trees. I’d seen cherry blossoms before, but never so beautiful and never so many. I suddenly understood why Basho wrote about them so many times—and for the period of the blooming I couldn’t stop writing poems, and I couldn’t write about anything else.

BIO:

David Ebenbach is the author of a chapbook of poems called Autogeography, as well as two collections of short fiction—Into the Wilderness and Between Camelots—and a guide to the creative process called The Artist's Torah. Find out more at www.davidebenbach.com.