On this last day of April, National Poetry Month comes to a dramatic close with Poem in Your Pocket Day.
I love this day. For weeks I have been preparing: posting poems, reciting poems, and sending postcard poetry. Already this morning, I have been gifted with poetry. Hannah, of the Young Writers (a high school writing group), emailed me a lovely Shel Silverstein ditty; and Julianna, barista at the Green Salmon Coffeehouse, handed me a coffee and one of her favorite poems, Bluebird by Charles Bukowski.
What can be better, I wonder, than standing in this circle of words?
Poetry
And it was at that age . . . poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, not silence,
but from a street it called me,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among raging fires
or returning alone,
there it was, without a face,
and it touched me.
I didn't know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind.
Something knocked in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first, faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing;
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
the darkness perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire, and flowers,
the overpowering night, the universe.
And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose with the wind.