“Along the wide curving moat surrounding the palace, rows of cherry trees announced the end of their seasonal beauty. Some of the trees were weeping: blossoms in white and palest pink, ponderous with decreptitude, eddying on the brown water, stirred by the paddling of ducks.”

“I was in an empty field when I came across a tree. This tree was full of white blossoms and succulent cherries. The sun was shining and the breeze was blowing—everything was lovely. I looked back at the tree and its pure white blossoms were stained with blood. I gazed down in front of me, in horror, as a wooden cross marked the place of a small dirty mound.”

“This couldn’t be just a lake. No real water was ever blue like that. A light breeze stirred the pin-cherry tree beside the window, ruffled the feathers of a fat sea gull promenading on the pink rocks below. The breeze was full of evergreen spice.”

“The cracked white cups took pink lights as the sun, already descending, slanted across the cherry; the tree filled the air with its heavy scentlessness.”

“I start to run, and my nose fills with the smell of rain and wet earth. I run along the shoulder of the highway in an easy rhythm, and the rain gathers up on my forehead and eyebrows; it flows down my face, it drips from the tip of my nose. There is wet dirt, a puddle in the gravel, new grass pushing through old in the ditch. Violets grow along the edge of the road. To my right, the Little Jib River flows brown and swollen to the lake. The water moves ceaselessly, and I move along with it. To my left, across the road, the rain strips wilted cherry blossoms from the rows and rows of trees, and drops them to the ground.”

“it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine”