Day 30 - Poem-A-Day

April Adieu

So long National Poetry Month-
You were just thirty days out of a year.
You brought heaps of poems
to my email, so many that reading them all
will stretch well into May, when many others
have returned poetry to the back burner.

Gone too will be my open opportunity
to preach the virtues and love of poetry
to the poetically deprived.

Even during your own month, we risk
retribution from many who will not
allow us to share what joy we find
woven into the soul of your many stanzas.

But not all is melancholy today-
No, today too ends the Poem-A-Day
challenge I undertook at the onset.
To take a predetermined prompt
for which I have not control
and mold it into a single, artful, cohesive
poetic unit each day.

Even the love of poetry-
yes, even a driving passion for writing
cannot prevent such an undertaking
from taxing the mind and sometimes
in the late hours of the night,
the body as well.

So, goodbye poetry month. So long
for now. I shall not stop reading
what many great poetic minds created.
I will turn to you over and over
throughout the year. And probably
after a momentary pause,
I'll return to the page with ink
and write from that place deep
within the human spirit
where poetry is born.

Maybe, just maybe-
come next April, in a weak moment,
I may forget how difficult
the daily birthing process
of creating these poems was
and again accept the challenge
of a poem-a-day.