The Seven Days of April: i-vii

i

Aah… April. Here you are at last, my friend,

in which your drizzly days have much to say

in silence, and in looking, and in wend-

-ing wheresoever you suggest we stray.

Your gray-cloud eyes, eternal and composed,

conniving nothing—capricious, yet still:

both storm and soberness, ne’er ill disposed,

nor worked-up by the wiles of a will.

Perhaps it is that unusual light

that draws our eyes to wander morn-fresh ways,

dew-dotted by morn-drops that dash our sight

beneath your stormy sentimental grays.

Show us these new and gray-sky-tempered roads—

reveal your thoughtful morning-minded modes.

ii

And all that thinking turns into glib night

that shrouds the thought and lets the skin grow cool,

and reins the thoughts that come—by every sight

of porch, or star, or streetlight—round its spool,

and threads that rein into a velvet loom

and weaves your mind into a mindful shawl

that leaves your night-cool skin to its own gloom—

while night has warmed your thought by its own call,

and afterthought recalls your body’s doom;

but it’s alright—this lucid thoughtline lives

enough to warm enough the skin it leaves,

for all the bliss and thoughtlessness it gives

allows forgotten thoughts to tend their eaves.

And only when the morning bird awakes

do you awake, too, and the skin retakes.

iii

But ere you leave that lucid state, and wake,

you were asleep—though dreams were not quite yours.

It did not dreams, but halfway visions make,

of consciousnesses’ voluntary tours.

A rest described by Tolkien’s elves it was.

Not as the hröa falls asleep most nights,

your fëa stirs in April’s dark, because

Spring’s victor bears “dear Tollers’” favorite sights.

And Kementári loves these nights the best,

for now her realm awakes and takes its place

before the minds of all who live; and rest

is hers, for hers is all of April’s space.

Thus, with your rest-and-not-rest, you now rise,

and wonder why you feel so warm—and wise.

iv

And now that gray morn feels like a sunrise,

for gray is what has warmed you most of all,

allowing you to see April’s best prize:

the beauty of the meanest and most small.

You leave your door with eyes that now look down

at simple joys—now that you’ve lost the sky—

find labyrinths within your own small town,

and realize that grandeur is a lie.

You need no car, nor train, nor an airplane

to find that which you seek of the sublime.

It is in all that is in what is plain—

if you can sacrifice a little time.

And, overhead, the gray sky smiles on:

the dimmest, and the brightest, kind of dawn.

v

You’re walking now on paths you can’t have guessed,

beholding all that’s never been conceived—

for, surely if it’d been seen by the rest

they would have said—or you would have believed…

But no-one spoke of plowed fields next to ponds,

not least that they were quite this close to you.

By cottages is where that charm belongs,

not in the boring town you always knew…

But ah! They have! These ears have been so stopped

with talk of foreign lands and fantasy

that things like local majesties are dropped

for that which is more grand? and… quality?

No glory in the sky can lure you now

away from glories like the farmer’s plow.

vi

And then it rains. But now your furrowed heart

accepts the offering without contempt.

The gray sky more than raindrops can impart

as your own eyes have not been left exempt.

Within the soil of your soul a sprout—

a spring of Spring shoots forth, unsowed by you,

but by the subtle singing, not the shout,

of dews and dawns and little dreams that grew.

Unknown by you. But welcoming and warm,

and willing to be greeted, now that Spring

has washed over you in its gentle charm—

now that you, too, can hear the Satyr sing.

So April nourishes not just the green,

but those that have, her gray sky’s wisdom, seen.

vii

Now Tolkien’s Kementári sounds like Pan,

and so do all the plows and ponds and lights

of nighttime, and I start to understand

that all have been the same refracting sights.

For Yavanna’s song sprung from Eru’s own,

and Pan’s from earthly yearning, the myth tells.

The ancients gave an Unknown God their throne,

and moderns to the one where music swells.

But in them both, one object yet remains

that April skies show all who heed their call:

no man more glory than his kin he gains—

good is not for the great, but for the small.

To that Small God I reach, and thank the sky

for letting me look Low, and not look High.