During the Galway Public Library’s temporary shutdown you are invited to be part of our write a poem during April celebration in honor of National Poetry Month. You don’t have to be a poet! Just a few lines during this month of emergence – what you found on a walk, what came up in your backyard, what you and your family have discovered during this time of imposed togetherness, or any act of kindness. Send one poem or send a poem for each day in April. All poems welcome! All ages welcome!
Email to galwaygettogether@gmail.com or send as a guest post on the library’s Facebook page.
We’ll post poems on the library’s website and share them on our Facebook page during the month of April.
SAMPLE:
Raking leaves
Little yellow suns unwrapped from
The brown paper bag of April
Then Mourning Cloaks
with yellow hemmed wings
— by Mary Cuffe Perez
The rooster crows, welcoming the day
Inviting songbird friends to join
In the haze of dawn
Breaking the silence of the dark night
A new day has begun
— by Adrianne Maros
The first day of April
Is the almost time.
The Cardinal whips up his song
Then lets it pour through the air so still
Not a drop is lost. The little ears
Of the ramps perk up in the woods
Of last years songs, wrapped
In the trees’ bare shadows.
–by MCPerez
While the birds returning to our yards this Spring cannot know the fears we live with today,
They offer their songs and we find solace and hope.
We are pulled toward the joy and, for a moment or two, we smile.
Enjoy this day.
–by Dawn Wheeler
Field of crocuses
purple beauty – but only
on my calendar.
–by Jeanne Frank
Cat perched on the sill
all a-twitter, tail flapping.
Birds taunt from the lawn
–by Evelyn Hanna
To isolate, we
hike high-desert trails. Cacti
catch blue-glove litter.
–by Patty Kay
Before times are gone.
I thought time was endless, no
boundaries. Not true.
–by Patty Kay
Desert bloom, gorgeous
patches of color; and cough,
sneeze, watering eyes.
–by Patty Kay
Daylight comes early.
Alarm sounds, roosters crow. Wake
up. It’s five o’clock.
–by Patty Kay
Ghost Leaves
On this second day of April
The beech won’t let it go.
Like some old soul who rattles
Its urgencies on the slightest wind
Or insists there’s a story
That begs to be told.
Read this the beech says,
In a shaky voice, before the
Copper lance of the swelling bud
Severs each page and passage.
–by MCPerez
Rain on the roof
Sad, dismal sound
Sky filled with mist
Storm clouds all around
Soon it will clear
And the storm will move on
And a rainbow will follow
When the storm’s finally gone
–by Ed Lewandowski
Rain on the third day of April
Fingertips of rain
pick out a few chords
on the surface of the pond,
a tune I see but barely hear.
It’s one the Robin knows.
He sows each note into song
so ripe, so round
it bounces on air.
–by MCPerez
Is that green? My eyes
don’t recognize that color –
so much snow, then mud.
–by Evelyn Hanna
How can a poem hold
this Spring? The anger, sorrow,
such terrible loss.
–by Evelyn Hanna
Vernal Pool
On a wet and warm April night
When the moon turns to its dark side,
They come
By the hundreds and by the thousands,
on four tiny legs each
a mile or more they travel
from woodland bog and burrow
answering the quack and peep and croak
A caroling of return
to the lap of the vernal pool
Where life begins again.
–by MCPerez
Song Sparrow on April 5
That little bird pumps the air
with everything he brought,
deep as he can go.
It puts me in mind of a rusted handpump
used to be where a farm once was
and the woman, too, I see her there
just on a day like this, pumping that handle
as hard as she can,
summoning that underground spring
to rise to the strength that brought her here
to surge and gush out bright and clear
as the song of the bird that sings
somewhere above her.
–by MCPerez