April is National Poetry Month. It’s time to celebrate all things verse!

Poetry is story, distilled. In a poem, every word, space, line break, and punctuation mark is doing work. If you haven’t experienced poetry lately, there is no better time than now to appreciate the stories that poetry conveys.

• Open your heart. The audience cannot be a passive receiver of poetic content—their response is just as much a part of the poem’s story as the words the poet chose.
•  Open your senses. Often people think of poetry as a mess of figurative language—the more the better—but good poetry carefully selects language that will compel the audience to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell the world of the story in a whole new way.
• Open your ears. I say “audience,” because poetry, just like a play, is really meant to be heard. We miss so much when we only read it silently. Read a poem out loud. Or really go wild—attend a poetry reading.
• Open your mind. Find some favorite poems and experience them frequently. You may discover something new when you least expect it.  Here’s a link to a poem that really speaks to me, Wallace Steven’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. The Academy of American Poets is a wonderful website to find the poems that speak to you.
• Open a vein. Write a poem. The conventions and constraints of verse make us organize our thoughts and figure out what we really mean.

As a tribute to the cruelest month I’m going out on the tightrope to share one of my old poems. “The Flying Wallendas’ . . .” first appeared in Hippocrene, 2009. Sharing is cringe-worthy for me, in many respects, but the story has its charms.

The Flying Wallendas’ Death-Defying, High-Wire, Seven-Man Pyramid

A poem by Kathy L. Brown

“A drum roll, please,” The MC says,

walking on a pool of spotlight.

“Hold your applause until all seven have crossed the high-wire safely.”

Bouffant munches cotton candy,

leans over to Ball Cap, and says,

“They don’t look so tough—

He’s gotta be fifty, at least.

And her, she’s definitely not—

thin.” Day-Glo electric blue

Spandex hides nothing.

He spills popcorn as he nods.

“They wouldn’t do anything really dangerous, just for a show.”

True enough. But the trick begins.

The crowd waits, expectant of presto-chango tah-dah,

but shivery dread-hopeful to be on the evening news.

“I saw it all—

—I said to my friend here—”

One by one, seven ascend—

elevated on—under—above the platform.

They overflow their space,

fourteen arms and legs akimbo, jut into thick air.

The first one steps onto the wire,

Tipping and turning a pole for balance—

A ward for the space they propose to create—out there.

Soon he’s yoked to another, matched in height,

balanced in strength.

Two more follow them into the tabernacle.

We’re all with them now, on the wire.

The counterweight of our eyes, our breath, our minds—

as carefully balanced as each step—supports them.

Levitation? Incantation? Transubstantiation?

A third yoked pair, balanced on the others,

support a throne, and the seventh ascends—

held aloft by faith— into the space.

Interlocked, balanced, weighted, and measured,

The pyramid holds together from its core—

A mystery.

Wallendas—rapt in intercession—have died for us. Amen.