Welcome to April’s Poem of the Month
Not only is April National Poetry Month, but it is typically a month full of celebrations for our family, with my parent’s anniversary and five birthdays all packed into the month. For me personally, April 23rd is a remarkable day, as besides being my own birthday, it is also Shakespeare’s birthday (which is great for a poetry lover), the Feast Day for St. George, Patron Saint of England (which is great for an anglophile), and the traditional Vintage declaration day for Taylor Fladgate (which is great for a Port lover). I like April.
We say goodbye to April and National Poetry Month with a poem about, what else…words. I’ve always had a fascination with finding those precise words to convey something that just seems impossible to explain. Sometimes I imagine that the birth of poetry came about with our ancestors standing and watching a blazing sunset, or staring up into an infinite sky of stars and then trying to recount the experience to someone else. Poetry for me is usually ordinary words, patiently weaved together by an artist who by the careful strokes of their pen transform their words into a colorful tapestry that – if done well – can leave us silent as we contemplate the marks on the page and our soul stirs.
Gregory Orr
(1947 – )
The World Seems…
The world seems so palpable
And dense: people and things
And the landscapes
They inhabit or move through.
Words, on the other hand,
Are so abstract—they’re
Made of empty air
Or black scratches on a page
That urge us to utter
Certain sounds.
And us:
Poised in the middle, aware
Of the objects out there
Waiting patiently to be named,
As if the right words
Could save them.
And don’t
They deserve it?
So much hidden inside each one,
Such a longing
To become the beloved.
And inside us: the sounds
That could extend that blessing—
How they crowd our mouths,
How they press up against
Our lips, which are such
A narrow exit for a joy so desperate.
