It’s National Poetry Month

In honor of #NationalPoetryMonth, the Better Half and I headed off to what has become a delightful and wondrous nature book store, Prairie Restorations in Scandia, where I purchased, inter alia, a book of poetry, Cold Spring Hallelujah, by local author and poet, Heidi Barr. Among other acquisitions today was a small bag of wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) seed that will be planted this spring to improve, enhance, and beautify the field behind the house. At least that’s the plan. We’ll see if, and by how much, reality differs. Remember what oft' happens to the best laid plans of mice and men. Perhaps we should have waited on the seeds until after April Fools’ Day.

a field of wild bergamot in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

National Poetry Month

Elaine Equi

When a poem
speaks by itself,
it has a spark

and can be considered
part of a divine
conversation.

Sometimes the poem weaves
like a basket around
two loaves of yellow bread.

"Break off a piece
of this April with its
raisin nipples," it says. 

"And chew them slowly
under your pillow.
You belong in bed with me."

On the other hand,
when a poem speaks
in the voice of a celebrity

it is called television
or a movie.
"There is nothing to see,"

say Robert De Niro,
though his poem bleeds
all along the edges

like a puddle 
crudely outlined
with yellow tape

at the crime scene
of spring.
"It is an old poem," he adds.

"And besides,
I was very young
when I made it."

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