Introduction by Ted Kooser: I was born in April and have never agreed with T.S. Eliot that it is “the cruellest month.” Why would I want to have been born from that? Here’s Robert Hedin, who lives in Minnesota, showing us what April can be like once Eliot is swept aside.

This Morning I Could Do

a Thousand Things

I could fix the leaky pipe

Under the sink, or wander over

And bother Jerry who’s lost

In the bog of his crankcase.

I could drive the half-mile down

To the local mall and browse

Through the bright stables

Of mowers, or maybe catch

The power-walkers puffing away

On their last laps. I could clean

The garage, weed the garden,

Or get out the shears and

Prune the rose bushes back.

Yes, a thousand things

This beautiful April morning

But I’ve decided to just lie

Here in this old hammock,

Rocking like a lazy metronome,

And wait for the day lilies

To open. The sun is barely

Over the trees, and already

The sprinklers are out,

Raining their immaculate

Bands of light over the lawns.

Putting bed pillows onto the grass to freshen, it’s a pretty humble subject for a poem, but look how Kentucky poet, Frank Steele, deftly uses a sun-warmed pillow to bring back the comfort and security of childhood. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Part of a Legacy

I take pillows outdoors to sun them   

as my mother did.  “Keeps bedding fresh,”   

she said.  It was April then, too—   

buttercups fluffing their frail sails,   

one striped bee humming grudges, a crinkle   

of jonquils.  Weeds reclaimed bare ground.   

All of these leaked somehow   

into the pillows, looking odd where they   

simmered all day, the size of hams, out of place   

on grass.  And at night I could feel   

some part of my mother still with me   

in the warmth of my face as I dreamed   

baseball and honeysuckle, sleeping   

on sunlight.