Spring

When I got to work this morning my laoshi — my Chinese teacher — was picking fallen cherry petals off the ground outside of my building. “Look, how beautiful they are,” she said as she collected them on a paper plate. “You should get some for your office.” Unable to confront reality except through the screen of a literary device, I suggested she should write a poem about the fallen flowers. Like they do in Japan.

“I can’t write poetry,” she said. “You write!”

Compared with the delightfulness of spring, poetic forms are empty gestures. I want to be a poetic actor, like my laoshi, not a sophist. Life is indeed too brief.