April is National Poetry Month!

Did you know? April is National Poetry Month!!!

Exciting right? I never thought i would say that. And really, maybe exciting isn't the word I'd use, but it is cool to receive an email every day with a poem of the day. I myself have always enjoyed poetry. No, it is not my passion. No, I do not spend most of my days working on poems, absorbing the worlds happenings in a completely different way. But in many ways, I wish I had a little more "poet" in me. From time to time I like to write. I'm a pretty emotional person (my girlfriend is probably saying to herself Pretty emotional? crying on a regular basis is more like very emotional and that is putting it lightly.) And writing, whether it be poetry, journal style, or otherwise, has always helped me deal with my BIG emotions. So, that is why I am honoring National Poetry Month. Not to mention that my girlfriend (her name is Amanda. I think it is time to call her by her name) loves poetry, literature, and anything bookie (well that's how I put it) and i thought she would enjoy (and be blown away that i even knew it was poetry month) reading about it here.

And here is today's poem:

The Apple Trees at Olema

by Robert Hass
They are walking in the woods along the coast
and in a grassy meadow, wasting, they come upon
two old neglected apple trees. Moss thickened
every bough and the wood of the limbs looked rotten
but the trees were wild with blossom and a green fire
of small new leaves flickered even on the deadest branches.
Blue-eyes, poppies, a scattering of lupine
flecked the meadow, and an intricate, leopard-spotted
leaf-green flower whose name they didn't know.
Trout lily, he said; she said, adder's-tongue.
She is shaken by the raw, white, backlit flaring
of the apple blossoms. He is exultant,
as if some thing he felt were verified,
and looks to her to mirror his response.
If it is afternoon, a thin moon of my own dismay
fades like a scar in the sky to the east of them.
He could be knocking wildly at a closed door
in a dream. She thinks, meanwhile, that moss
resembles seaweed drying lightly on a dock.
Torn flesh, it was the repetitive torn flesh
of appetite in the cold white blossoms
that had startled her. Now they seem tender
and where she was repelled she takes the measure
of the trees and lets them in. But he no longer
has the apple trees. This is as sad or happy
as the tide, going out or coming in, at sunset.
The light catching in the spray that spumes up
on the reef is the color of the lesser finch
they notice now flashing dull gold in the light
above the field. They admire the bird together,
it draws them closer, and they start to walk again.
A small boy wanders corridors of a hotel that way.
Behind one door, a maid. Behind another one, a man
in striped pajamas shaving. He holds the number
of his room close to the center of his mind
gravely and delicately, as if it were the key,
and then he wanders among strangers all he wants.

Here is the link to find out more: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

Like I said, I really do enjoy poetry. I still don't know all of the details of what I like (for example, specific styles, or tons of authors that fall into those category). But I can read something, think about it critically, or not, and know whether or not I like it and understand at least one level of what is being said by the author. If it is a poem I REALLY like, it is easier for me to look a little more deeply and see the other things going on like verse form, and rhetoric . Do I sound like a freshman college student, or what. But what this all leads to is that I am still (happily) learning and enjoying what I learn. I do this by reading new authors, new books, new poems-often times these are things Amanda has led me to.

My most recent book of poetry was given to me as a gift.

And I love it. I read a little of it each day. But still I come

back to the poem that was noted in the front cover message written to me by my gift giver. Page 29 is for you. While I claim this poem as mine, I feel the need to share, because it is amazing.

Bicycles

Midnight poems are bicycles

Taking us on safer journeys

Than jets

Quicker journeys

Than walking

But never as beautiful

A journey

As my back

Touching you under the quilt

Midnight poems

Sing a sweet song

Saying everything

Is all right

Everything

Is

Here for us

I reach out

To catch the laughter

The dog thinks

I need a kiss

Bicycles move

With the flow

Of the earth

Like a cloud

So quiet

In the October sky

Like licking ice cream

From a cone

Like knowing you

Will always

Be there

All day long I wait

For the sunset

The first star

The moon rise

I move

To a midnight

Poem

Called

You
Propping

Against

The dangers

Taken from:BICYCLES: Love Poems, by Nikki Giovanni

Happy Tuesday, Y'all