National Poetry Month

ProetryPlace Blog 49: For National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month.

It seems an appropriate choice.

There is much in this spring month to inspire the poet.

April showers bring May flowers. In spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love. Etc.

Yet I find few poems in my own writing that extol the virtues of the springtime and the rush of emotions associated with it. I have written more of the fall and winter seasons than of spring and summer. I suppose that comes with the perspective of age, but I will try henceforth to pay more attention to the glories of the seasons of warmth, renewal and growth without ignoring the seasons of harvest, respite and repose.

Poetry month, of course, promotes all poetry and  is not restricted to poems dealing with spring, but here are a few that do.

Spring Rains

by  Sara Teasdale, an American Poet, 1884 – 1933.

I thought I had forgotten,

But it all came back again

Tonight with the first spring thunder

In a rush of rain.

I remembered a darkened doorway

Where we stood while the storm swept by

Thunder gripping the earth

And lightning scrawled on the sky.

The passing motor busses swayed,

For the street was a river of rain,

Lashed into little golden waves

In the lamplight’s stain.

With the wild spring rain and thunders

My heart was wild and gay;

Your eyes said more to me that night

Than your lips would ever say . . .

I thought I had forgotten,

But it all came back again

Tonight with the first spring thunder

In a rush of rain.

~

A spring haiku by Richard Allen Anderson

from my book of poetry, Another Season Spent, Vabella Publishing, 2013

spring rains return

more softly than memories

of lost loves

~

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

a classic by English Romantic Poet, William Wordsworth, 1770 – 1850

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills

When all at once I saw a crowd;

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;

A poet could not be but gay,

In such jocund company!

I gazed and gazed but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

This final unnamed classic by an unknown (to me) poet

Spring has sprung

The grass has riz

I wonder where the birdy is.

The bird is on the wing

But that’s absurd

The wing is on the bird.

Richard Allen Anderson    April 6, 2014      http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com