On the last day of National Poetry Month—today—I turned my attention finally away from Leonard Cohen and listened to a CD of e.e. cummings reading his own work. Undeterred by the fact that he was a pretty terrible reader (or this was one truly substandard performance), I was happily reminded how much I love his poem “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond.”

Truly love.

I don’t know the last time I looked at that poem, and I really had forgotten how much it moves me. What a lovely way to finish out the month of April—when I’ve read more than a poem a day, including much work by poets new to me. Being reunited with this old friend today was remarkable. If you have a poem or poet you like but haven’t read for a while, please stop reading this post right now and go read that work.

This kind of brought National Poetry Month full circle to me, since one of the surprises for me in Leonard Cohen’s The Flame was hearing a voice like cummings’ in Cohen’s “Antique Song.” I swear, sometimes patterns emerge in my life that flabbergast me.

Also, as a convenient punctuation mark on National Poetry Month, my copy of The Flame arrived at my local bookstore today, and I brought it home.

Happy camper.

Listening to Cummings’ readings on the Voice of the Poet audio series inspired what is probably my own last poem of the month. This one doesn’t have a name (yet?), but that might be appropriate, given that Cummings didn’t really hold much with putting titles on his own work.

Beware because
the end does not justify the means
tomorrow cannot erase today
and therefore
doesn’t justify
although

This Voice of the Poet CD, which is packaged with a book of all the included poems, also brought me the gift of a couple lovely poems I didn’t already know (confessing ignorance here), including “no time ago,” three stanzas about meeting Jesus that are packed with many layers of meaning regardless your spiritual inclinations.

And because April is also Earth Month, and I’ve spent the month getting inspiration from Tweetspeak Poetry’s Poetic Earth Month challenge, I have to include “i thank you God for most this amazing day,” a glorious celebration of our natural world. Listen to it, or read it, or both.

To any of you who have read any of the poems I’ve thrown together this month, thank you.