I’m leaving.

While all over town cherry blossoms

are in a pink uprising—stampeding the senses

of unsuspecting ones merely trying to mind their own business.

And dogwoods are holding on to their fat little white fists, shaking

them in the wind at anyone who might notice them.

Everything says stay, don’t go and

a thousand heavy sighs escape me at every

up and coming branch that tries to halt me from my

appointed task—a final reckoning with what it will cost to leave.

Goodbye sweet trees.

Goodbye greening leaves.

Goodbye the whistling chorus out my kitchen window

—the geese coming home.

It’s not that I’m gone forever—

just long enough to miss this spring and all its terrible beauty.

I’m already full of melancholy

and I’m not even gone.

© 2015  ~  Shoshana Wolfington