Magnolia Blooms vs. Cherry Blossoms

I’ve been taking a few walks around to admire the spring’s boasting blossoms, and primarily those of the celebrated cherry trees, and the rarely mentioned magnolia. I’ve been contemplating things as I’ve walked about, camera in hand, and have come to the conclusion, that for a number of reasons, I do believe I have decided on a preference of the flowering magnolia over the blossoming cherry.
Of course both have their merits. Both are beautiful in their own right, both are plentiful (at least here in Seoul), and the depths to which each can carry one’s musing thoughts can also astound, as I will soon try to prove.
On the surface, and en masse, their similarities may cause a more passive onlooker to wonder why such scrutiny is even worth enduring, however, despite their abundance in numbers, their pale hues, their seemingly scentless raiment, and their fragile, lives measured more in moments than in any span of time, further inspection reveals worlds of difference between these harbingers of longer, warmer days, of re-birth, renewal, love, and all that spring itself has come to represent, with their too-brief heralding cries, at once celebratory and lamentable, for the flickering flames too soon to perish, in the greater glow of the sun, which I will now begin to reveal, as I have witnessed these last few days.
In appearance, both are light. Though, while cherry blossoms boast of purity, transparent as they are, delicately dressed in bridal white, while baring their hearts for all to see, casting their glance downward, in feigned humility (for they know all eyes are on them), as they line the aisles all else walk, and as the gentle zephyrs breathe through the trees these fragile blossoms fall floating, carried by the breeze until they drift aground like springtime snow, ill-anchored in their Sargasso Sea of green, to carpet the passersby footfalls in their silent sacrifice, whereas the majestic Magnolia flowers are arrayed with petals of a richer hue, like mother’s milk, and hide their golden treasures buried deep within, from all but one (the sun) to whom they lavish honor with their stares, unless you coax their gaze away by force, but even then they soon return, and that explains why they’re so soon to burn, to brown, to whither away, and shed their heavier cloaks like strips of leprous flesh that break you heart to see, so tattered and torn lying abandoned beneath the tree, but there is beauty in their passing, as there is beauty in some tears, and a single petal fallen can shine, a symbol for lost years, and looking up you see all those left, mourning not those lost, but continuing in worship, celebrating despite the cost.
In texture too we find comparisons neither seen, nor heard, nor smelled (and I didn’t put either in my mouth, so taste I leave for more devout to explore and expound upon as leisure or calling dictates); where cherry blossoms feel like silken threads, so thinly spread in so small a space, a skillful seamstress’ tapestry, equal to any spider’s web’s embroidery, with veined features and seams too fine to see, the richer fabric of the magnolia is like the softest skin you’ve ever touched (yet taut), the most sensitive delicate areas, only the trusted feel, and even the weathered portions, even those sections that look burned away (whether weather-worn or devoured it’s difficult to say), but even those imperfections, if they can be so-called, feel like the healing scabs of skin deep wounds, soon to pass from itch to scar.
I heard no sound from either, I assume they have no voice as such, and in aroma, neither breathed more than the soil (or yellow dust, beside, there can be no equal to their coming kin, the lilac’s lavish lavender languishes in their shade soon to best them both), and having already admitted my unwillingness to taste, all that’s left is to examine the thoughts to which these two sensations lead…

…But I’ll leave that for a future musing, first and foremost, your own; I’ve kept you long enough already that you may miss the chance to meet these messengers in our midst now that spring has surely come.