Vacation Slideshow

Slouched on the couch
my parents show me pictures
from their trip to D.C.
the first days of spring.
 
My mother is smiling
by the famous cherry blossoms
that explode off the trees like
fireworks frozen in the sky.
 
They’re in almost every picture,
these blossoms, adding splashes
of beauty to the monuments
 
like the Lincoln Memorial and
Arlington National. They took
pictures of them all with
blossoms in the background.
 
Only one slide has no
cherry blossoms –
the midnight black expanse
of the Vietnam Wall
 
takes up the entire frame,
where two men stand
side-by-side, tracing a name
out of the sea of departed souls.
 
I can’t see their faces,
but my father tells me he saw
them crying and embracing --
in fact, he admits to
weeping himself,
so hard that he went back to
photographing the cherry blossoms
to remind himself that
the world has traces of beauty
engraved upon it too.