When water touched their sleeping buds
the jasmine flowers opened as pinyin
then floated to the surface
the way thoughts become a poem
and blossom into words.

My father would put his ear to the lip
and listen to what the blossoms spoke
as they renewed their lives in warm spring rain.

He would offer me a sip of April,
though April was never as perfumed
as the music I am certain he heard
when he closed his eyes, inhaled the fragrance
rising in tendrils of curling steam
steeped in legend and a rice grained bowl.