April – National Poetry Month

April – National Poetry Month

I love to showcase New Authors! Here is a wonderful poem from a lady in my writer’s group, Laurel Van Horn. When she read this piece to our group, I knew I needed to publish it on my blog in honor of National Poetry Month. Ah… April.

April, Showers, Etc.

by Laurel Van Horn

Lion-like March gives way

to lamby April – which arrives in warming sun and showers –

its spontaneity intact.

And, what a fertile subject it has proved for poets –

Like a gloomy-doomy T.S. Eliot pondering a cruel, conflicted April

with its lilacs and rain and messing about

with our “memories and desires”;

Like a gregarious Chaucer setting off with a motley gaggle of Canterbury pilgrims

a Medieval reality show in the making –

once April’s sweet showers have made a muck of March’s dryness;

Like a paternalistic Sir William Watson claiming that

April’s tears are those of a frivolous young girl,

just as its laughter is;

Or, like a quirky, outside-the-box e.e. cummings teasing us about

a slutty, wet-legged April in a mud-splattered skirt;

whereas, a courtly John Masefield, bowing to a gracious and elegant April,

calls her “Lady April” and doffs his hat as well.

And, what of me, the humblest of poets?

I say that April is all the things that any poet has ever said about her and more,

but that Shakespeare, of course, might have said it best –

that April “hath put a spirit of youth in everything.”

(Laurel Van Horn is a former teacher, having taught English for twenty-three years at Rappahannock County High School. She retired in 2010 and just recently began writing again after having joined the Windmore Foundation’s writing group, Pen to Paper, and being inspired by all the terrific writers she has met. Culpeper has been her home for over 33 years and continues to be a wonderful place to live.)