snow on cherry

First snow
                                            on the cherry tree —
               blossoms
                                        and

all that I see as kindred not unlike those
fierce loves that fell, one upon another burning
on our lips — these Children,
spent in the naming and narrowed, no, rent
from the first name — Love — driven, singular
as the blind eye of some feeble god to a well or
some tawdry screw in an otherwise
empty drawer. Crave then as, crave
then as Each and piteous flake craves —
dead in a drift — simply: crystalline and thus
bound to join, thorn to thorn, woven, sutured
(yes) to a shroud that unlike you or I, once
relieved, no more viscous than saline, leans
against a mountain peak, piteous too though
longer dwelt — gathers up upon a mote
so high as to, as too both you and I risen and
fat from a bud and almost, almost
fixed, as if fixed to the pole and daring, as if
Polaris (as if) turning, became the seed upon which
all thin ice clings, both singular and non — fallen
as all fallen, as gathered, as blossoms,
as blooms upon the fast and fastened,
as October on a cherry tree.

Image: David Brooke Martin on Unsplash