Day 12, National Poetry Month: Storm Watch

We're expecting six inches of snow today, April 12, 2013. Here are three takes on this rather unwelcome weather.

First, Richard Wilbur reading his poem, "A Storm in April" HERE.

A Storm in April   (by Richard Wilbur)

Some winters, taking leave,
Deal us a last, hard blow,
Salting the ground like Carthage
Before they will go.

But the bright, milling snow
Which throngs the air today—
It is a way of leaving
So as to stay.

The light flakes do not weigh
The willows down, but sift
Through the white catkins, loose
As petal-drift

Or in an up-draft lift
And glitter at a height,
Dazzling as summer’s leaf-stir
Chinked with light.

This storm, if I am right,
Will not be wholly over
Till green fields, here and there,
Turn white with clover,
And through chill air the puffs of milkweed hover.

Setback       (by Catherine Chandler)

I’d seen a goldfinch, days were getting mild,

the crocuses were up, and I could hear

the wild geese honking on the pond. Beguiled,

I’d set the garden chairs in place in sheer

delight. The northern winter-spring transition

is never easy, but I’d hoped this year –

Alicia’s cancer gone into remission –

that April would be kind. Then we had snow

this afternoon, a boreal admonition:

Not so fast. Not so

fast.

                 Oh, to be the quiet sort

who bow their heads, accept the status quo,

conceding there’s a God and we’re his sport,

that winter is so long, and life so short!




Another poem on the same theme, April Snow, by Matthew Zapruder, can be read HERE.