In all the flurry moving toward this year’s late Easter, I have managed to allow half of April to fly by without noting that it is National Poetry month. I have never been sure how these proclamations occur. Why April instead of, say, November? Who decides? What goes into any month being given over to a particular distinction?

Make no mistake about it. I am all in favor of a month dedicated to the art of poetry. Truth be told, these days, I find more wisdom and clarity in poetry than in most other forms of writing. There is something about the spare nature of poetry that is able to get at a particular feeling or experience. With all the information that can flood our ears, our eyes, and our senses, it is refreshing when a poet takes only a few lines and several well chosen words to speak a truth, to describe a beauty, to tell the truth of a story.

So, while I still don’t have the answer to the ‘why April’ question, I have made my own conclusions. The month of April is so full with blossoming and new life it could easily be overdone by, say, National Novel month or National Sermon month. How quickly any writer could fall into a wordy frenzy describing the crocuses gleaming purple along a white picket fence. How risky it might be to allow the speech writers to take over the month proclaiming how the ice slowly turns black, begins to recede from the shores of lakes and finally disappears altogether at some central point as it hovers over the depths of frigid waters. And could a journalist give adequate expression to the sheer wonder of deep, green,velvet grass as it emerges in full force from beneath the black crust once known as snow?

No. Poetry, for my money, is the only use of language that can adequately tell April’s story. The sweetness of a well crafted line. The beauty of a few well honed words that feel holy in your mouth as you allow them to roll around forming glimpses of springtime memory in your brain. Perhaps April also is poetry month because so many famous poets have written about this spring month. Poets like Laurie Lee:

“If ever I saw blessing in the air
I see it now in this still early day
Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips
Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye. ”

Or Edna St. Vincent Millay:

“April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.”

In observation of April as Poetry Month I have just purchased a little book written by one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver. It is simply called A Poetry Handbook and is a guide to writing poetry for we wannabe poets. There are still enough days left in this glorious month for creating a few poems of my own. I will try to lay aside my tendency toward over-stating and wordiness. Instead, I will practice observing the unfolding world around me and choosing a few words, a very few, to tell the story of April, this very blessed month.

Do you have a few lines of poetry in you to honor the glory of April?