NaPoWriMo 2021

You may have already noticed that I’m partaking in NaPoWriMo 2021, the annual poetry writing month that inspires writers of all abilities to try and compose a poem every day. Recently diagnosed with CPTSD and suspected ADD, I’ve discovered that my always terrible time management may actually be linked to one or both of these conditions. Embracing that, I am posting my poems, and indeed, this introduction, in no particular order! I have a rigid schedule for my paid work which I find exhausting, so to allow myself to randomize the writing I love is actually very freeing.

This first poem was actually written pre-NaPoWriMo and the only poem I’ve performed live in many months. I don’t normally explain my poems, as I think it’s kind of like explaining the punchline of a joke, but I hope it’s clear that this poem is about my own anxieties around our returning freedoms, and how we may or may not adapt to them.

April Fool

I’ve been tricked before

Thinking that the rain had gone

Then soaked by selfish

April showers

Thinking that the sun was stretching

Cranking it up to 11

So I left the jumper in its

Yearly cocoon

But Sol was still

In bed

I’ve been fooled once,

Shame on me

Twice,

Shame on me, me, me…

Thinking that the snow

Was done, that Cailleach’s cry

Could not reach my ears

Thinking that seedlings soft and

Fragile

Could pop outside for a time

What an April Fool I’ve been.

Now can we pop outside

Is it truly time

To stretch our roots and tendrils

Back towards the dense forest

Leaving our individual copses

Ours stands, our hedgerows.

While March Winds blew

Through aching leaves

We longed for May-time flowers

Are we truly built

To wait, to want,

To withstand April showers?