April is National Poetry Month, a time when booksellers, libraries, poets, publishers, and schools are encouraged to promote the importance of poetry and its significance to society and culture. So I suppose I should share a recognized poem of importance along with my garb. So I’ll do that.

Poetry is tricky business 
It need not rhyme 
Or have flowery prose
But you can’t write about 
Things like 
Ruining a good shirt
Carrying black mulch
Or how Dairy Queen 
Cost $18.64
For four chicken strips
Fries
A coke
And a small Reese’s blizzard

I have to say 
Things like
I watched the carpenter bees work the redbud tree
This afternoon 
From my porch
Or I spoke honestly to a friend
And maybe damaged feelings 
When it wasn’t my intent
But to bring understanding 
And how pushing me into a corner
Is never an ideal spot for me
But the beauty was in
The grace that my words were received

And so April has burst forth
At eighty degrees
With blowing yellow pollen
And tiny yellow flowers
And it was my yellow shirt I soiled
Carrying black mulch
And no blog post is complete
Without mention of my dog
Who is laying at my feet
Smelly and greasy from flea treatment
But better that than itchy 
With fleas

{that one was mine, in case you couldn’t tell}

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud

Hope that doesn’t count as plagiarism, since I provided the link. I’ve always loved that poem, and I think it’s a great one to kick off this month. I hope I can surprise y’all with some quality reading this month.

Love from Appalachia,

~Amy