National Poetry Month - the Egg & I

So here it is again, the made-up holiday for poetry only American poets even know exists, and most of us find the festivities and publicity to be on a par with National Beetroot Day.

The one thing I like about National Poetry Month is the NaPoWriMo challenge. I don't know where it came from, but the idea of poets across America gearing up to begin on April 1 to aerobicize their muses and write a daily poem -- makes me want to write a poem. So I jumped the gun:

Getting the Jump

Usually jumping only for news or puddle,
or leaping in spring along with the clock,
I find myself tonight elevating via my fingers
on keys, limbering up for the exercise
of National Poetry Month’s oeuvre-a-day –

or is it oeuf? An egg on a plate, golden eye
of verse targeting me instead of the other
way around. I’m staying up late the day before,
trying to cheat by seeding ideas onto the white
plate of the page, and hoping the jump
of a few – well, four and a half hours – will count
me nimble in the game of daily poetry.

And if that isn't your cup of tea, you can sign up at Poets.org to be emailed a poem every day from recent collections. Sounds awfully dull to me, but we all celebrate in our own way.