April Showers

A poem and a monthly prompt

Pitter patter Splitter splatter The rain still pours Yet does it matter?

We while away hours Of wet April showers Inside warm homes Our very own bowers

Venture out after to Smell air so sweet Pure, ozone clean and Gardens replete.

I love this time of year when it’s starting to get warmer and the evenings are getting lighter. We still spend most of our time in the comfort of our home as we do all year round, because of our chronic illness issues; even so there are so many small joys to be experienced, mainly because of our place in a more rural area. Outside our windows (which I really must clean), Mother Nature stretches and breathes. The sun shines more, even when it’s raining- and the petrichor is gorgeous after those April showers! Bare elder bushes outside my back door show sprigs of new growth and small flowers begin to emerge - and then there’s my favourite springtime thing, the birds. I am surrounded and serenaded with birdsong. They hop around collecting nesting material, fluttering to and fro, industrious and joyful. The nest in the eaves of our old house, on the chimney stacks and around the roof of the church behind us. I talk to the masses of rooks which roost in pairs in the trees which grow by the cemetery wall behind us. I’m conscious of wheeling sea birds which come in from the nearby coast when the weather is getting bad out there and watch as it too blows inland and washes over us.

The Prompt

Small joys.

That’s our theme for the month of April. As I wrote in the prompt piece over on Counter Arts, I don’t really enjoy ‘April Fools’, but I am interested in bringing a little light into our lives. I know it’s been a long, dark few months for many of us. Whether we have been living through a cold winter or antipodean summer, I’m aware that anxiety and depression are weighing heavily on a lot of my Medium friends, and on me too.

So comedy or small pleasures in your poetry and fiction responses please. Let’s lighten our hearts.

(Note: The USA celebrates National Poetry Month in April and it’s seems quite a large scale, well organised thing, so if you live there and would like more information, go here: The Academy of American Poets Announces Programs for National Poetry Month, the Largest Literary Celebration in the World | poets.org)

Here’s the Counter Arts piece if you prefer to write a nonfiction essay:

Open to anyone, so share if you like, but to start us off I’m doing a little tagging again:

Arthur Dewson — Reece Beckett — Asterion — Erie Astin — Jackie Olsen — Raine Lore — Marc Barham — Will Hull — Carlos Garbiras — SteviLeeAlver — km. rowe — Vic Spandrio — Alan J. Schwarz — Carlo Zeno — frnkflwrs — Harry Stefanakis — K. Joseph — Amanda Laughtland — Margie Willis — Mariam Dalhoumi, PhD

Thank you as always for reading, it means a lot and any comments you leave truly warm my heart.

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Stay safe. Stay warm. Stay well. Keep on reading and writing. With love — Sadie.