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Carolyn Martin - Poet

“All my life I have tried to find the truth and make it beautiful.” – Sting

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The Wasteland

Happy April Fools’ Day

April 1, 2021 by Carolyn Martin 4 Comments

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!

 

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