April is Poetry Month! by Nancy M Bell

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Spring is here. I think... It's April and April is poetry month, so it must be spring. My mare is shedding her winter coat, the gophers are out and stealing her grain while she's eating it. But there is still 5 feet of snow drift on my back garden....so Spring...what the heck!

But I digress. As I mentioned, April is poetry month. So my goal this year is to write a poem a day in April. I've done this before many years ago and then just sort of lost the time to do this when life kind of took over. When you read this, it will be April 18th, so hopefully I will have 18 poems under my belt by then. I'll let you know how I fare in next month's blog.  

For those of you who write poetry, come join me in my April quest. For those of you who dabble or don't write poetry at all...why don't you go for it. Not necessarily a poem a day, but maybe just one or two for the month. Poetry is amazing, so many forms, so many emotions and moods it can invoke. I find poetry cathartic myself, somehow giving the emotions or thoughts the freedom of lighting on the blank page gives me freedom to let them go. 

Poetry is joy, sorrow, grief, love and whatever name you wish to attach to it. So come on, let's go for it! April Poem a Day here we come.

Just to whet your whistle, here are a couple of my older poems.

From 2011

Spring Snow

Nancy M Bell

The storm demons are howling rabidly across the sky

Dragging their icy talons against the window glass

Screeching their defiance through the hydro wires

Buffeting the house with their fists of wind

Shrieking they the fall upon the exposed prairie

Vomiting great gouts of snow to cover the earth

They hurl handfuls of icy pellets in my face

As I struggle to let the stock into the barn

 

Mean spiritedly they snatch the door from my frozen fingers

Slamming it open and popping one of the hinges

I bare my teeth at them and wrestle the door from their grasp

Hold it steady as the horses troop in out of the angry storm

 

The bale of hay spills its summer scent in the frigid air

A sunlit meadow song to battle the storm raging outside

The storm demons grab me in their teeth and shake me

As I blindly make my way back to the house

 

Power and fury personified; they scream their defiance

Their voices howling through the wind in my ears

Reluctant to exchange the winds of winter

For the thunderheads of summer 

   

Bitter Ashes

The taste of bitter ashes on my tongue

All the more potent for their age

The things I should have said

Coiled about the things I did say

Time slides by in endless flood

Bearing my choices out of reach

Things I can’t change

Things I wouldn’t change

 

That line from an old Kristofferson song:

“I’d rather be sorry for something I’ve done,

Then for something that I didn’t do.”

Oh, the things I didn’t do!

 

Choices that affected other’s lives

More compassion here, more forgiveness there

The phone calls I didn’t make

The words I didn’t say

 

The taste of bitter ashes on my tongue

More potent for their age

All I Want

All I want is to walk in Grace

To live my life under the wide sky

With a good horse under me

And endless country in front of me

 

All I want is to make each day count

For something; no matter how small

I fed a stray dog the rest of my sandwich

I put seed out for the birds and food for the feral cats

 

All I want is to be happy in my skin

To know I’ve done the best I can

With what I had to work with today

And know that I will try to do the same tomorrow

 

All I want is the wide sky sweet with dawn

And the morning breeze on my face

Followed by the burning blue noon

With the sun at its zenith

 

All I want is the golden sky of sunset

And the dry prairie wind hot on my neck

The softness of evening gilding the range

As the gold melts into the royal blue of night

 

All I want is the silver of moonlight

To throw shadows across my bed

While the song of the coyote rides through the night

To know that all is right with my world

  

Till next month, be well, be happy.