Indomitable cherry tree

Rain and sunbreaks all day. I love this stub of a tree. It's hemmed in completely by concrete and pavement. The top is completely lopped off. Nobody ever feeds it or trims it. Abandoned and broken, it still does this every year. Astonishing. A friend posted this poem by

Richard Schiffman, "environmental journalist" on FB today:

"Late March"
Again the trees remembered 
to make leaves. 
In the forest of their recollection 
many birds returned 
singing. 
They sang, they sang 
because they forgave themselves 
the winter, and all that remained 
still bitter. 
Yet it was early spring, 
when the days were touch and go, 
and a late snow could nip a shoot, 
or freeze a fledgling in its nest. 
And where would we be then? 
But that’s not the point. 
Do you think the magpie doesn’t know 
that its chicks are at risk, 
or the peach trees, their too-frail blossoms, 
the new-awakened bees, all that is 
incipient within us? 
We know, but we can’t help ourselves 
any more than they can, 
any more than the earth can 
stop hurtling through the night 
of its own absence. 
Must be something in the sap, 
the blood, a force like gravity, 
a trick called memory. 
You name it. Or leave it nameless 
that’s better— 
how something returns 
and keeps on returning 
through a gap, 
through a dimensional gate, 
through a tear in the veil. 
And there it is again. 
Another spring. 
To woo loss into song.