Now, of my threescore years and ten, twenty will not come again. Well, lad, of my three score years and ten, 69 will not come again. Happily for me I need not ride about the woodland to see cherry trees, for I have two in my yard upstate.
For several years I was unaware of their existence. We told ourselves, when we bought the place in the last millennium, that if we came there from the city as little as ten times a year, the investment would be worth it. We soon began coming at a rate that worked out to 40 or so times a year. Yet, if some of those missing in-between weeks were in early spring, when the nights still risk ice on the ponds, and the trunks of the tall trees in the woods stand brown and leafless like prisoners just liberated from a camp, you would miss the cherry blossoms, so brief are they. Then came the year we hit it right. Well, look at that. A low-hanging pinkish cloud, unmoving, suspended from its supporting branches over the open lawn where the light was most giving. Down the lawn, alongside the man-made detour of the stream we call the pond, floated its fellow, poised over the rank bank where no one walks but in full view of the two chairs we put on the other side for sitting on warmer days. You may not touch me, but see me in all my finery.
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