Happy April friends, family, readers, fellow bloggers, and more. April 1 is the kickoff to National Poetry Month. Poetry is one of my first loves in writing. Short stories were my first and I hope to revisit that soon, but poetry, poetry has seen me through. It was been my go to through good times and bad times. It is how I express myself and even a way I have found to help others express themselves. I’ve had people tell me about loved ones and give me words that I have been able to craft into a personalized poem for them. Poetry is so personal and also subjective. Sometimes I write about things I experience, sometimes it’s just things I craft in my brain.

Every April for years now, I turn to Writer’s Digest and their Poem A Day challenge in which Robert Lee Brewer shares a prompt each day of the month. Some years I complete the challenge and some years despite my best efforts, it just doesn’t get done. My hope for this year, for this April, is to have my writing focus be on poetry. I won’t post on here every day, but most days this month I will share my poem for the day. Will you join me? You don’t have to be a poet to write poetry. You don’t even have to rhyme. We all have a story to share. Maybe this month, you can do it through poetry.

April 1, 2025-Prompt-The Best of Times and/or the Worst of Times

If ever two things could co-exist

Black and white

Easy and Difficult

Right and Wrong

Soft and hard

Asleep and awake

Birth and death

Old and new

Beginning and ending

The best of times and the worst of times

The irony of opposites is not lost on me

In a world of harsh realities

and lovely, beautiful things

How could my heart be in two places at once?

How can I be happy and sad at the same time?

How can it be the best of times and the worst of times simultaneously?

I’m torn open and completely whole

I’m put together and broken

So broken

In the best of times

and the worst of times

At the very same time.