Running Out of April

I came across the following quote of a computer programmer named Rob Knauerhase while doing a Google search for quotes about the month of April.  "Isn't it appropriate that the month the taxes begins with April Fool's Day and ends with cries of 'May Day!'?".  I was looking for something to lead this particular blog entry as I was pondering the fast passing of yet another month. I think it is perfect.     

Yet perhaps the line with which T.S. Eliot starts his "The Waste Land" with "April is the cruelest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/dull roots with spring rain," is even better.   Is April a cruel month?  It does stir the dormant roots with its spring rain.  Is that "cruel"?  Perhaps Eliot means it is cruel to wake the dead...but then, are the dead ever truly dead?  Perhaps this is an allusion to the parable of Jesus waking Lazarus?  Perhaps it is alluding to the fact that no one is dead as long as they are remembered by others.

Then there is the proverb, "April showers bring forth May flowers" which is a definite truism to be sure.  Everywhere, every year, April is traditionally a rainy month.  Perhaps that is why I love it.  I love the rain, the clouds, the cool days that have the promise of spring blooms and coming warmth.  It is the potential I am enamored out.  As long as I feel there is a potential in things, it gives me reason to carry on. This is why I lament the passing of April. 

April means moving from potentiality into fruition, of the seeding days to the blooms of spring.  There is inspiration that comes in April as the world wakes from its winter hibernation. 

I found the following poem at poemhunter.com by Carolyn Brunnell that says it for me:

April Awakening

A delicately woven welcome; 

a soft touch for each blossom, 

a tease of every velvet blade of new grass 

pushing up through weary soil. 

I press each stamen close to my face 

light and flirtatious; 

tiptoe aimless with no worries or cares 

on such a delicious and fragrant day. 

April's warm sunshine speaks to nature 

in a language few understand; 

awakens and coaxes me into the sky 

where I can learn to be a butterfly.

---Carolyn Brunelle

Once again we are running out of April.  Potential is again becoming reality in bloom. It is and annual reality that symbolically mirrors our lives.  I long to remain in April even as I enter the September years of my life.  I am not yet ready to harvest.  I hang on to potential with a quiet ferocity only I can know.  I yearn to be Brunnelle's butterfly.  I do not long to shout "May Day!"...not until the time is come.  That is why I hope to never run out of April.