Last poem of National Poetry month

The picture tells you all you need to know.  I published this on my Calenderpages blog a couple of days ago.  I've fallen in love with it in the same way I'm in love with Mark Strand's poem about the dog they call Spot who sings.  And finally I want to direct the attention of readers to the Kunitz poem in the right hand sidebar -- "live in the layers not the litter" is a motto for me.  Another poem with a line I think of frequently because it's a question that keeps me grounded in the here and now is from Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day" which is "what will you do with your one wild and  precious life?"

I think many poets celebrate National Poetry Month as seriously as I do.  For me it's an excuse to read and distribute poems to people who migt not read poems very often.  So many people are afraid of modern poetry, they have seen "difficult" poems in The New Yorker or other publications and think all poetry is too hard for them to understand.  So I say to them, these are clear -- as simple and clear as Hafiz's poem above, simple words, quickly grasped meaning, and words tell you something about how to live.  Only a great poet can be so concise. Those are the poems that last hundreds of years.