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Happy Poetry Month! This year Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 26th. I'm already thinking about which poem I will select.

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/406 ... =pocketday

Any ideas of how we should celebrate this year? In years past we've created a poem together, one line at a time and played poetry games. Here is a game idea: Each day we try to come up with a poem that has the number of the day in it - ex: Today is the first, so the poem needs to have the word one or first in it. Yes, I think this is it (although, if anyone comes up with something else fun, we can play two games). I already know what I will post for April 8. I will start a new threat for our game. I will call it Poetry by Numbers.

Here is a poem for the first day of National Poetry Month -

National Poetry Month
by Elaine Equi


When a poem
speaks by itself,
it has a spark

and can be considered
part of a divine
conversation.

Sometimes the poem weaves
like a basket around
two loaves of yellow bread.

"Break off a piece
of this April with its
raisin nipples," it says.

"And chew them slowly
under your pillow.
You belong in bed with me."

On the other hand,
when a poem speaks
in the voice of a celebrity

it is called television
or a movie.
"There is nothing to see,"

say Robert De Niro,
though his poem bleeds
all along the edges

like a puddle
crudely outlined
with yellow tape

at the crime scene
of spring.
"It is an old poem," he adds.

"And besides,
I was very young
when I made it."

Thanks, Saffron! I really like : "Sometimes the poem weaves
like a basket around
two loaves of yellow bread."

Tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket Day! Need a poem or want to know more about it go to:
http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/406 ... =pocketday

The poem in my pocket today --

The Tree
by Alfred Kreymborg


I am four monkeys.
One hangs from a limb,
tail-wise,
chattering at the earth;
another is cramming his belly with cocoanut;
the third is up in the top branches,
quizzing the sky,
and the fourth—
he's chasing another monkey.
How many monkeys are you?

In my coat pocket, within a paperback book I've had for 38 years, the edges of the pages chewed by indoor rabbits we once had.

Hunting Pheasants in a Cornfield

I
What is so strange about a tree alone in an open field?
It is a willow tree. I walk around and around it.
The body is strangely torn, and I cannot leave it.
At last I sit down beneath it.

II
It is a willow tree alone in acres of dry corn.
Its leaves are scattered around its trunk, and around me,
Brown now, and speckled with delicate black,
Only the cornstalks now can make a noise.

III
The sun is cold, burning through the frosty distances of space
The weeds are frozen to death long ago.
Why then do I love to watch
The sun moving on the chill skin of the branches?

IV
The mind has shed leaves alone for years.
It stands apart with small creatures near its roots.
I am happy in this ancient place,
A spot easily caught sight of above the corn,
If I were a young animal ready to turn home at dusk.

Robert Bly