Celebrate :: Poetry

 

I had other plans for April, some idea of what this month might be about for me and my family.  What I'm finding is that pushing that plan is tragically, comically painful.  On the other hand, what is showing up without any effort at all, is quite lovely.  April, National Poetry Month.  I'd be hard pressed to conjure up something, from inside my own head, that I'd enjoy celebrating more than a month full of poetry.  

So welcome to April on my blog.  A month of Monday poems.  Starting with the one I found hanging from the tree at the end of my block.  (I know, it's hard to believe, but I live on a block where poetry grows on trees.  You should see it for yourself sometime).

Is it a coincidence that the poem I chose, at random, was written by a poet who was born in North Carolina, who was raised in California, who went to school in the Bay Area, and worked in New York City?  It might have been a celebration, so strong the presence....It doesn't come fresher picked than this....

The Past

by Barbara Guest

The form of the poem subsided, 

it enters another poem.

A witness was found for the markings 

inscribed upside down.

It might have been a celebration, 

so strong the presence

of the poem.  

The sky sinks slowly inside the past.