April is National Poetry Month. And today – April 18 – is “Poem In Your Pocket” day. Today’s the day to carry your favorite poem with you, and give it to people, and let people know.
I don’t have a single favorite poem. It depends on my mood, which is sometimes a little somber. But it’s April, so let’s have a brighter one today – a very early one by John Ashbery:
Some Trees
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance
To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges
A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.
