April is poetry month, and I find that wholly appropriate, moreso this year than ever before (do I say this every year?).  In the region where I live, April is a changeable month, duplicitous almost.  It has its warm, promising, lush green days, punctuated with the slate-gray, cold, wet remnants of March.  It is exciting; it is a time that cries out for renewed passion; it is forlorn; it is a time that calls for caution.  A person with a weather eye learns to manage expectations, to ration his or her hopefulness, to maintain contact with reality while still dreaming of new possibilities.

April is poetry.

This Month
by Diana Pinckney

This month, this green April
leaves. Leaves before I can look
long enough, absorb the white curve
of dogwood, the coral
and lavender of azaleas,
remember enough
of that month I waited
for my dark-eyed boy
to be born.
Or the April
that disappeared
when my father died.
It turns cold, warm,
cold again, blooms.
Rain steals its petals.