April's Poetry Month

I meant that in both senses of "it's" - it is and belonging to April. For I can think of no better way for the world immediately around us to get our focused attention than to do this unfurling, blooming, pollinating, mating, rutting, wind-waving, sun-bathing, wing-spreading fertility dance that is spring. The world is writing poetry and we rush to document its glories. Photos of blooming fruit trees and bulb sprout on Facebook and poetry readings sprout in city after city. We feel the call of the senses with the frost melted off surfaces and the mornings lush.

I plan to celebrate poetry this month by just doing what I do: writing every day, making time to study the craft, to journal and free write, and to shape a poem if it will come. To read, read, read, which is my chief source of inspiration, along with the vivid world of my senses and the way they call forth words.

This terrific, funny article by Ann LaMott (thanks, Molly Fisk!) makes me so grateful to be a writer -- even if my house isn't always clean, my bills sometimes skip their payment cycles, and the to-do list remains un-to-done. I'll always find time for poetry because I must.