#pocketpoem -- Do you know about this?

Regular readers know that I love poetry. And you may also know that April is National Poetry Month. But do you know about #pocketpoem?

Every April, people are encouraged to celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day, and this year it's on Thursday. April 27. Check out this link. What a fantastic idea! We can all use a little more joy and love in our day. In fact, I was thinking about writing on that very topic -- you know, leave a little love behind wherever you go. But then I remembered about National Poetry Month and discovered this gem. So I had to share.

What a caring, creative way to leave a little love behind. Share a poem. The link has some great ones to get you started. Or share your own favorite. Could be the lyrics from a song, a sonnet from Shakespeare, a psalm or something you wrote yourself. Let the poetry in your heart out, especially on Thursday. Read to your partner. Let a child read to you. Let yourself hear the poetry in the language of the everyday life that surrounds you all the time. There's nothing fancy or secret about it. It's right there in front of you all the time. Let Billy Collins, one of America's Poet Laureates, tell you what poetry really is.

Introduction to Poetry, by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

It means whatever you think it means. Find your poem, and then share it. Leave a little love behind this Thursday. We all need it. I know I do.