April

April

April began with a song of loss and pain,

a beautiful song, although of grief;

it filled my heart the whole month long.

This April I have walked with death 

alongside poetry. Each held my hand –

sometimes one, sometimes the other. 

Sometimes they held hands with each other,

and both with me; we sometimes danced 

even while April rain kept falling.

All the ghosts of all the loves

drifted like shadows around our dance

or distantly kept pace along the path.

And then, on the final night of April

Samhain arrived, the feast of the dead

when the veil thins and we welcome them.

One by one they came to greet me,

then turned away at last, as death sang

more softly now into the ear of poetry.

April was a song of love, a song

to break my heart. April was a month of rain: 

rain and poetry, and loved ones gone. 

Background story:

In the first prompt for Poems in April (2019) at 'imaginary garden with real toads', Marian included the song 'April, Come She Will' from Simon and Garfunkle, written by Paul Simon and sung beautifully by Art Garfunkle. It must be the only one of their songs I'd not heard before. I fell in love with it, played it over and over, and shared it on my facebook profile. That enabled me to notice comments on it at YouTube, about a tragic loss in Garfunkle's life. I became curious, and went on to immerse myself in Art Garfunkle via his website, his poetry, his journal-like memoir. I had always paid more attention to Paul Simon, thinking him the true creative genius of the duo, and dismissing Art as just a beautiful voice – like many people, I think, including Art himself in a generous and obviously sincere tribute in the memoir. I discovered, to my joy, a perfectly lovely man – modest, humorous, adventurous, deeply philosophical, full of integrity, impressively well-read, devoted to his family, and very creative in his own right in music, writing, and visual art. 

Meanwhile, my own April was taken up in dealing with some recent deaths of loved ones and, inevitably, recalling earlier losses ... as well as finding out about one impending. The April poems, and the S&G song constantly in my head, helped me through it. Thank you, Marian and 'toads'. And of course, for a (Southern Hemisphere) Pagan like me, Samhain being the last night of April was perfect, as I could complete my April journey in a ritual to reconnect lovingly with my dead and then let them return to the spirit land.

Linking this to the first Tuesday Platform after April at 'imaginary garden'.