how terrifying spring is

It definitely does not feel like April to me, but here we are again: April 1, rainy and cold in New York City and honestly still feeling kind of like March, emotionally. (Has it ever not been March?) But I want to see poetry month this year as looking forward to bright things. I'm vaccinated; I'll be traveling for the first time in over a year; I'm going to get to see some family, and some friends. Hugs are on the horizon.

For anyone new, or anyone who would like a refresher: April is National Poetry Month—this year is actually the 25th anniversary, which is pretty cool, and also means I've been posting poems for more than half the time that National Poetry Month has existed, since 2021 will be my 15th year. I try to post a poem a day for the month of April. I almost never manage all thirty days, but I do my best; I also try not to repeat poems I've posted before, except in special circumstances, or to repeat authors during the course of the month. Here we go! 

Watching that frenzy of insects above the bush of white flowers,
bush I see everywhere on hill after hill, all I can think of
is how terrifying spring is, in its tireless, mindless replications.
Everywhere emergence: seed case, chrysalis, uterus, endless manufacturing.
And the wrapped stacks of Styrofoam cups in the grocery, lately
I can't stand them, the shelves of canned beans and soups, freezers
of identical dinners; then the snowflake-diamond-snowflake of the rug
beneath my chair, rows of books turning their backs,
even my two feet, how they mirror each other oppresses me,
the way they fit so perfectly together, how I can nestle one big toe into the other
like little continents that have drifted; my God the unity of everything,
my hands and eyes, yours; doesn't that frighten you sometimes, remembering
the pleasure of nakedness in fresh sheets, all the lovers there before you,
beside you, crowding you out? And the scouring griefs,
don't look at them all or they'll kill you, you can barely encompass your own;
I'm saying I know all about you, whoever you are, it’s spring
and it’s starting again, the longing that begins, and begins, and begins.

—Kim Addonizio (b. 1954), "Onset," from Tell Me (BOA Editions Ltd., 2000).