Fickle April: National Poetry Month

T.S. Eliot called April "the cruellest month." Geoffrey Chaucer referred to it as a "time of sweet showers." Toubadours Simon & Garfunkel note April as a time "When streams are ripe and swelled with rain." Even cartoonists recognize April's split personality.

I posted this poem on David L. Harrison's Word of the Month site, where I've participated regularly for over a year. A word is chosen each month, and the challenge to poets is to create a poem using that word. This month's word, "detour," seemed just right for April.

Contradiction

April detoured from
luscious lilacs and
sun-soaked skin to
cold cloud cover,
wicked wind and
fiendish frost.
Even the showers shiver.
(copyright 2012, Jane Heitman Healy)

What do you think about April?

Hear Eliot himself read from "The Waste Land":


Hear Chaucer's "General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales read in Middle English:
The Canterbury Tales - General Prologue -... by poetictouch