Celebrate National Poetry Month!

Welcome to April. Those who ignore National Poetry Month are truly April's Fools. Instead, to celebrate you can "Order a free National Poetry Month poster and display it at work or school."

country dawn

Photo by J. Harrington

Why celebrate poetry? Poetry is the net some of us use to capture what dawn's colors bring. Or, after sunset, poetry may come to us as it does to Gary Snyder.

How Poetry Comes to Me

It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light

There is poetry in the grace and rhythm and repetition of a fly line being false cast to reach a trout rising just beyond the reach of our best effort. Smoothly merging into fast-moving traffic on the way to work is poetry in motion. A child's wobbling balance as she takes her first steps writes poetry as she walks. A country ditch full of trillium, a puppy's joyful bounds toward his new human, pines whispering gossip to share with the roosting raves bring poetry into our lives. Sometimes, like Snyder, we have to meet poetry at the edge of the light. Sometimes, it explodes into our lives, bringing rays of brilliant light through troubling cloud cover. It is always there, but often we're too busy to notice. Then, later, poetry helps us remember the good times. I grew up in Boston and loved rides on the Swan Boats even before there was a

The Public Garden

by Wendy Mnookin   

The sun is shining and I’m content
to be myself, walking across the Common
as families queue up by the Swan Boats,

real swans parting the water
in elegant wakes. This is
la vie en rose—

on a lawn vivid with spring
people walk their dogs, peeling off
in clusters of introduction and gossip;

below a sign that shouts Don’t
Feed the Ducks, families throw
wadded-up bread into the pond;

kids on the carousel want
More! More! Frisbee players,
tourists in Red Sox caps, babies

with their dimpled elbows,
the guy on stilts, the pretzel vendor,
the woman holding out a cup for change

as she recites our forecast,
I’m taking it in, all of it, sun
and melting cones, skinned knees

and soothing words
and single shining tears,
whatever love has rained on us all.

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