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Image courtesy: Ceyda Ciftci, Unsplash

Hello all,

Sanaa here (aka adashofsunny)

Today, we are running LIVE for the first one hour of the bar i.e. from 3PM to 4PM EST. If you wish to join in to read out your poem, just link up, and you will be called upon to do so in respective order. Here is the link below:

https://meet.google.com/szr-cjna-xhv

We are using Google Meet, which means that you should be able to click on the link and run it in the browser, but if that doesn’t work download the app and run it on your Smartphone or Tablet.

I recommend that you use a headset for the best experience, and please mute your microphone when you are not talking.

April always reminds me of resilience; to each great poem are the opening lines, signifying marvels to come for the eyes, the ears and soul. And so, it is the same with the season of spring, its brilliance declared by the first glimmers of green.

The Late Wisconsin Spring

by John Koethe

Snow melts into the earth and a gentle breeze   
Loosens the damp gum wrappers, the stale leaves  
Left over from autumn, and the dead brown grass.  
The sky shakes itself out. And the invisible birds  
Winter put away somewhere return, the air relaxes,  
People start to circulate again in twos and threes.  
The dominant feelings are the blue sky, and the year.  
—Memories of other seasons and the billowing wind;  
The light gradually altering from difficult to clear
As a page melts and a photograph develops in the backyard.  
When some men came to tear down the garage across the way  
The light was still clear, but the salt intoxication  
Was already dissipating into the atmosphere of constant day  
April brings, between the isolation and the flowers.  

Now the clouds are lighter, the branches are frosted green,   
And suddenly the season that had seemed so tentative before  
Becomes immediate, so clear the heart breaks and the vibrant  
Air is laced with crystal wires leading back from hell.  
Only the distraction, and the exaggerated sense of care  
Here at the heart of spring—all year long these feelings
Alternately wither and bloom, while a dense abstraction  
Hides them. But now the mental dance of solitude resumes,  
And life seems smaller, placed against the background  
Of this story with the empty, moral quality of an expansive  
Gesture made up out of trees and clouds and air.

Read full poem here

Amazing, isn’t he? Do let me know what your reading preferences are during the month of April in the comment section below. For now, let’s link up one poem!

I look forward to welcoming you on Google Meet.

Find here the recording of the event