Cherry blossoms

I took this photograph the day of the opening of the cherry blossom festival - music, cherry blossoms, and it wasn't even raining! At least for this one moment.

We're lucky in Vancouver to have a cherry blossom festival. It runs through most of the spring (check out their website at http://www.vancouvercherryblossomfestival.com/2008/) and tells you where to go to see the blossoms (we have something like 47 varietals of cherry trees in Vancouver) at any particular time.

One of the things I love most about spring is the blossoming of the cherry trees. I love the pale pink blossoms when they bloom and love them maybe even more when they fall. It feels as if the world is coated with a layer of pink snow - and it's NOT cold. Spring also includes - my favorite part of the festival - a haiku contest. I don't know about you but I love haiku. I love reading them and I love writing them. I'm one of those writers who likes the idea of structure - because that structure (of a haiku, or a short story, or a sonnet) gives you incredible freedom.

I'm not going to write you a cherry blossom haiku - mostly because the ones on the cherry blossom festival website are amazing - but I'll write you one right now about something else:

Rain falls without cease

torrents of April greyness

when is spring to come?

Okay, not great, but not bad for two minutes. One year when I knew I would have little time to write, I bought a big notebook and wrote a poem every single evening before I went to sleep. Many of those poems were haiku and I still love writing them and reading them.

Are you a closet (or an out of closet) poet? I'd like to be.

Kate