April

 A few years ago (see post for January 25th, 2019), I posted a shovel poem, inspired by Charles Simic's poem, "Watermelons."

Here's an explanation of  shovel (or golden shovel) poetry:

The "golden shovel" is a fun poetic form to work with.

Here are the rules for the Golden Shovel:
Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.
Use each word in the line (or lines) as an end word in your poem.
Keep the end words in order.
Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).
The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.
If you pull a line with six words, your poem would be six lines long. If you pull a stanza with 24 words, your poem would be 24 lines long. And so on.

Well, today I have done the opposite, with the same poem, but instead of using the poems words to end each line, I used them to begin each line so that, if you read the first word of each line downwards, you will read the original poem.  First, the original:

Watermelons

by Charles Simic

Green Buddhas

On the fruit stand.

We eat the smile

And spit out the teeth.

And now my poem:

April

Green creeps slowly in. Trees wait patiently as

Buddhas for leaves to sprout

on their branches.
The bark shimmers in the rain, as we await

fruit which still seems a lifetime away. We'll

stand in the warm drizzle that 

we so looked forward to, after endless snow,

eat ice cream at the stand, after

the cold months of waiting,

smile at the parade of children, old folks, bikers

and bankers, lining up for their treats.  The sky may

spit snow now and then, but cold days are on the way

out, at least until Halloween season, when

the pumpkins, with their glowing eyes and grinning

teeth, will light the coming darkness. - Jeff Barnes