April

We like April,
her green skirts are dotted with sunshine yellow.
She pitter patters
round the dark hedges
in golden heels,
planting hot pink kisses.
Her breath sweet and warm,
her bright eyes blue,
she waits outside the window
with her mockingbird laughter.

--Angela Ellis

This poem was inspired by Emily Dickinson. Sometimes it's fun to just play with another poet's idea and make it your own. I feel like a jazz musician riffing away my own little version of another's melody. During one of the Sun Belt Institutes I attended, I was lucky enough to be present for Emma Bolden's lesson. I loved it when she had us 'translate' an Emily Dickinson poem into prose. What we discovered is that spring is different to each of us, really depending on where we have experienced it. Emily Dickinson's spring would be quite different from, say, the spring I experienced in Florida, and even the one here in Alabama. And lo and behold, Ms. Dickinson snuck in some antiwar sentiment in the last line. Who knew? Here is the original poem:

We like March, his shoes are purple,
He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
That our minds are hot.
News is he of all the others;
Bold it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
On his British sky.

--Emily Dickinson