It happens this way …
For all you lovers of jokes, pranks, hoaxes, and punks, this is your day to shine – or, according to Merriam-Webster Online, to behave foolishly, to fool around, to fool with, play the fool, feel foolish, be fooled, or to be made a fool of.
Since I can’t tell a joke to save my life — I always flub the punch line — and can’t pull off a prank without giving it away with a premature laugh, I’ll stick to what I know better: poetry.
Literary folks may remember the opening of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Or the beginning of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
I played with those two classics to create this sonnet:
A Sonnet for Early Spring
When April mixes memory and moss,
twenty moles pilgrimage the yard and toss
aerated soil around our flower beds.
When three feral cats train to track red-heads
and orange-tails, there – beneath crusty leaves –
baby snails, grubs, and worms yearn to believe
the world was made for them. When daylight frees
itself from thoughts of winter-death and trees
convince the earth oblivion’s a hoax,
then every squill and bee engenders hope
that sundry folk, daffodils, and sweet peas
will raise voices with saints of every creed.
They’ll inspire young bleeding hearts to sing
about the lean elegance of waking spring.
All joking aside, enjoy the “lean elegance of waking spring” wherever you are today!