Obscure Symmetry

On the top of a hill, rooted in the earth, rests a short broad cherry tree in full blossom. The intricately weaving branches create a canopy that covers the whole of the wide hill under its mesh of dark green, rough brown, and fresh red. Under the broad expanse of this motionless tree rests a hardened wooden bench. On this bench sleeps a young man, his head pitched forward, resting on his chest, his hands laying at his side. His palms face up, as if his eyes were captured looking up at the tree and he was exclaiming, "What beauty!" holding out his hands in a gesture of awe and gratitude as if he could hold the essence of this moment in his outstretched hands.

This was not so, but the sun creeping over the horizon and the obscure symmetry of the day illuminates the canopy of the cherry tree. The refraction of light between the leaves and flower petals makes the tree glow as if lighted from within. Below the canopy, resting upon the trees root structure, the bench and the young man are still shrouded in nights fading darkness.

A small brown bird emerges from the surrounding forest below the hill, drawn to the tree by its luminosity in a landscape still waiting for light. Searching for the source of the warm glow of the tree, and captured by the smell of the flowers, the bird hops around the tree branches, anxiously chirping in its confusion. At first only a single petal is shaken loose, falling straight down towards the earth.

The chirping has awakened the young man on the park bench where he slept alone in the cold of the previous night. The landscape of his dark dreams begins to fade. His eyes still closed, he raises his head to smell the scent of wet, cherry blossoms. The red petal brushes his nose before coming to rest in his lap. Still caught between the realms of nights' dreams and days' awakenings, he half imagines, half wishes that the tickle at the tip of his nose was an eyelash blinking him a butterfly kiss. He smiles before he opens his eyes, but only half expects another pair of searching lost eyes to meet his own. Only half disappointed at this absence, he raises his gaze to the sound that had awakened him from his imagined bliss of another reality.

He sees the still dark, blue-white sky in the intermittent gaps between the tightly woven branches, the brilliance of colors brought to full fruition by the morning sun, the half hidden form of a bird hopping between branches and, falling towards him, brilliant red petals, like so many drops of blood. The wind is utterly still and the obscure symmetry of the new day allows the petals to flutter, but not change course at they fall straight down in perfect lines. He observes that the red petals are too heavily beautiful for the tree to bear under the sunlight’s' weightless luminosity, as a cascade of red falls around him. As time passes, the sun illuminates the young man and the park bench and later the entire hill. The bird grows tired of its search and flies away heading east. In that moment the young man knows he will someday look back on this moment with nostalgia, but not because of the unshaken petals weighing down the cherry tree, or the unfinished bed of red on the dew dropped grass, but because of how freely the bird flies from the tree and disappears into the woods, chirping to anyone who would hear.