Poem of the Week

As we all now know, April is being celebrated in some parts of the country as Confederate History Month. Luckily for those of us who enjoy four-week-long observances but prefer not to glorify the losers of the Civil War, April is also host to a number of other holidays. A quick Google search revealed that April is: National Volunteer Month, Jazz Appreciation Month, Facial Protection Month (what? yes. “Facial Protection Month can target anyone from construction workers to families to professional athletes.”), and the ever-important National Car Care Month.

However, my favorite April occasion, aside from my grandma’s birthday, is National Poetry Month. As an unrepentant English major, I enjoy any excuse to devote a little more time to creative writing & reading. So, a few years ago, I started collecting favorite poems to send to friends throughout the month of April. This year I’ve been receiving some poems back, including the one I’m about to share, by a D.C. poet, Judith Harris. Although the blossoms are mostly gone already, it seems timely*.  Enjoy!

In Your Absence

By Judith Harris

Not yet summer,
but unseasonable heat
pries open the cherry tree.

It stands there stupefied,
in its sham, pink frills,
dense with early blooming.

Then, as afternoon cools
into more furtive winds,
I look up to see
a blizzard of petals
rushing the sky.

It is only April.
I can’t stop my own life
from hurrying by.
The moon, already pacing.

*I didn’t want to sully your pre-poetry reading with any ranting, but now that you’re through: while I am in general quite tolerant of the tourists infiltrating D.C. in the spring, I’m drawing a line. I don’t mind the cameras, the maps, the masses of small children (I’ll admit it—I tend to like the small children). I don’t even get too worked up about the blissfully ignorant standers-on-the-left-side-of-the-escalators. But last weekend, wandering amidst the truly lovely cherry blossom trees, I saw a number of tourist types taking pictures posed in the middle of the trees. And they’re pretty trees, and I’m sure that makes for nice pictures. But shaking down the branches of said trees so that they will artfully rain blossoms down on you? Just to get a more photogenic shot? Absurd. Rude and selfish. Their cameras ought to be confiscated.

Same goes, or a comparable punishment, for the polite out-of-towner, family in tow, who stopped me in Dupont Circle to ask drawlingly if there was “an Olive Garden or something” nearby.