In 1909 poet George Sterling christened San Francisco “The Cool, Grey City of Love,” and over 100 years later, the epithet still holds true: it is a dreary, cool, grey day here in San Francisco. As the rain spills forth from the clouds, the usual hum of cars in the street crescendos to a whoosh. And though it feels more like November or March, there is one thing that reminds me it is May 17, a month shy of summer: this bowl of tart, sweet cherries sitting on our counter.

Every time I think of cherries, the phrase “I am cherry alive” starts running through my mind. The phrase is actually the first line of a poem by the same name. I never memorized anything beyond “I am cherry alive,” so I decided to look up the rest of the poem in The Random House Book of Poetry for Children. While the poem is sweet in portraying the unabashed wonder and delight of a child, it savors of sadness at the impending loss of a carefree childhood. In a way, I think that’s appropriate for this rainy, spring day—a mix of mirth and melancholy.

I Am Cherry Alive

“I am cherry alive,” the little girl sang,
“Each morning I am something new:
I am apple, I am plum, I am just as excited
As the boys who made the Hallowe’en bang:
I am tree, I am cat, I am blossom too:
When I like, if I like, I can be someone new,
Someone very old, a witch in a zoo:
I can be someone else whenever I think who,
And I want to be everything sometimes too:
And the peach has a pit and I know that too,
And I put it in along with everything
To make grown-ups laugh whenever I sing:
And I sing: It is true; It is untrue;
I know, I know, the true is untrue,
The peach has a pit,
The pit has a peach:
And both may be wrong
When I sing my song,
But I don’t tell the grown-ups: because it is sad,
And I want them to laugh just like I do
Because they grew up
And forgot what they knew
And they are sure
I will forget it some day too.
They are wrong. They are wrong.
When I sang my song, I knew, I knew!
I am red, I am gold,
I am green, I am blue,
I will always be me,
I will always be new!”

Delmore Schwarz (1913-1966)