Happy April & Happy Poetry Month!

Just like last year, I am celebrating National Poetry Month! Though Eliot says that April is the cruelest month, I find it bearable with just some poetry added...


The first poem I'd like to share is one by an author I've been talking about a lot lately. Janice Kulyk Keefer, author of The Ladies' Lending Library and winner of the Kobzar Award, is best known for her novels and her family memoir Honey & Ashes, but she is also a poet. Her latest collection, Midnight Stroll, opens with a lovely poem in honour of reading. So without further ado:

Reading

for Connie

A garden, summer, a river

a woman. She is not on a swing,

or crumpling her silks on the grass:

she is in a hammock, and she is reading.

The web holds her, the arms of the trees,

the silver bracelet on her arm: sun

sways in the water below her.

This air holds something golden;

it honeys the leaves

in their dark clusters. The nymph

forever emptying her urn

which is forever full, hears it:

a hum, the deep murmur

between eyes and page.

Think of the paintings of women, reading.

Magdalens, mistresses, letter-lovers.

How the paper in their hands

turns lucent as pearls, drinking

the gleam of ink. How they lean

into language, as if they were sails

on windy seas, these women, reading.

Her husband, wading among the watercress

does not call out to her, knowing

her mind holds the book the way the hammock

holds, but does not enclose her,

this woman in whom

there is the warmth of coral

worn against skin; whose arms

always open in greeting.

One rare summer afternoon:

a book, her only intimate. The stillness

in this garden is an instrument, put softly down;

light across the water weaves

its burning nets --

nothing disturbs

these words, travelling

the blue roads of her eyes.