About April Being 'the Cruellest Month'

 

Regardless of hemisphere,

how can we say now

which month is the cruellest?

All the weather everywhere

has gone extreme, in ways

that appear capricious

though in fact a logical response

to our silly, greedy, or just-

plain-thoughtless tinkering.

It’s a wild world we live in now,

not yet a wasteland, perhaps –

or only in portions, where the wars are –

but it’s coming, that time 

we used to call the future, so much 

closer now … inevitable, inexorable. 

                                ***

In April we make poems,

many of us, around the so-called

civilised world. That’s not

the same as civil. Oh, if we could all

be (truly, deeply) civil to each other! Maybe 

then, poems would have some meaning. 

The ‘legislators of society’ now

are the money-makers, the big

money-spenders to make more.

Headlong to our doom,

we might as well make poems

as we plunge over the cliff.

Is the cruellest month the one 

in which most suffered, died …?

Or that which offered hope?

Notes: 

April is poetry month in America and is now observed in many other countries too, particularly in the (international) online poetic community. Many people commit to write a poem a day for this month, often to prompts published in specific online poetic groups.

In 'The Defence of Poetry' 1821, the poet Shelley claimed that 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world'.

The line, 'April is the Cruelest month' begins T.S. Eliot's poem, 'The Waste Land'.

***

This piece was written for Friday Writings #170 at Poets and Storytellers United.

And sometimes it rains outside a poem …

 

... I want to say, to my friend who shows me

beautiful images of rain, beautiful words

for rain – inside rain poems, inside monsoons …

and I know they are real, those rains,

those pictures in poems; but I am inside 

the shell of my walls, thankful for light

(so many here now have none) as dark falls

outside, where rain has not stopped falling

for days, for long nights, as the rivers rise.

Two nights ago, on this hill, I hunkered down

pulling my walls in around me, waiting 

for cyclonic winds. They never arrived

and I’m thankful. Cyclone Alfred danced

and flirted with the swirling ocean, took 

his time coming to land, looked around

and headed a little further north of here 

than originally planned – a flighty cyclone,

a teenager, randomly changing his mind:

a playful lad, not a fighter. But although

he's not fierce, he's big. Even as, at last,

he calms and slows, the fling of his arms

casts rain clouds east to west, north to south,

day after day after day, night after night after 

night … while the winds hit places nearby,

power lines crash and tangle, trees are uprooted 

or lose their branches, as everywhere the rain

falls and falls, and all the rivers continue to rise.

Written in response to Rajani Radhakrishnan's 'Rain after rain after rain' post on Substack.

Shared with Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #169: Answering Writing in Writing.

Surviving Cyclone Alfred

 

‘Glad your ordeal’s over,’ 

they tell me, full of concern

for both me and my little cat. 

Some add, ‘You never needed

to suffer so much stress.’

How to explain? For me

it was necessary (even though,

I now know, much of it wasn’t)

and an adventure (even though here

nothing spectacular happened).

Poppi was extremely comfortable 

on piled blankets, enjoyed her supper, 

and is always happy near me. She did

protest the disruption – on principle – 

loudly, once, then settled and slept.

I’d set up the bathroom early. (‘Choose

your smallest room,’ officialdom said.) 

I’m old and slow, Poppi’s old and deaf.

I knew I couldn’t wait for some moment

of certainty, urgency, then start to move.

The night before, I was very scared.

It was the unknown, the waiting.

I got up, made camomile tea,

read Tarot and I Ching, glugged 

Rescue Remedy, went back to sleep.

I always need something to do.

On the night itself, there were things 

to do. I couldn’t read, instead kept watch 

on Alfred’s slow, erratic progress. ‘Keep 

the updates coming,’ family begged.

The comfortable chair soon wasn’t.

Sitting up all night in one position

was a strain on these elderly legs. 

I hauled out the shower chair, added 

a cushioning blanket, propped my feet.

By morning – with news of downgrading

to a mere ‘tropical low’ – I went to my bed.

Poppi checked the view from the windows,

then came, as usual, to supervise me. I 

disappeared into the soundest, safest sleep.

I’m too high for flooding. I have supplies.

No tree crashed on my roof. My windows 

didn’t crack. I haven’t lost power yet. 

Others are not so blessed. Alfred wasn’t

the strongest, but his reach was wide.

I hear right now an ambulance – or is it  

a fire truck? – sirening past, just down the hill.

(The firies do water rescues too.) I almost

wish I was Catholic, so I could cross myself.

Instead I send light. As I do to the whole area.

In hindsight, I see, much that I did 

was unnecessary, some of it foolish. 

But I’m proud I achieved things 

I never imagined I could, physically

and mentally – yes, ‘at my age’!

Before the event, my niece-who-is-like-

a-daughter phoned to say, ‘What an 

adventure!’ (In drought country, she 

envies us all this rain. ) Only a small 

adventure, I tell myself. But yes!  

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings  #168: misunderstood words and misconceptions.

I wrote this poem to correct false impressions some people had about my experience of  Tropical Cyclone Alfred, based on facebook posts to keep my family and friends updated – which impressions ranged from deep sympathy for my supposed 'ordeal' to dismissing my preparations as making a ridiculous fuss.  

Truth is, most people here were flying blind, doing our best to follow advice from the authorities; the cyclone took a long time to make landfall, and its path kept altering during that time; I personally experienced only inconvenience and discomfort, but many others suffered devastating damage to their homes; there was an aftermath of widespread flooding, though thankfully very little loss of life.