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April Poem

Every year about this time I bury my mother’s bones. And in May they spring up as lilacs and in June they float softly on the Irondequoit Creek and in…

Every year about this time
I bury my mother’s bones.
And in May
they spring up as lilacs
and in June they float softly

on the Irondequoit Creek
and in July they march down
Columbia Street
and end with smoke.
In August they become

Poison Ivy creeping
along the trail where I walk
with my daughter.
Soon they’ll be hidden
under dead leaves and snow.

The thaw will have its say
again next year
and I’ll reach for the shovel,
happy for moonlight
and a grasshopper’s song.
 

—Daniel Bowman Jr. (Blackford County)
 

This poem is from A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country (Virtual Artists Collective, 2012).

Daniel Bowman Jr. is the author of A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country: Poems and is currently at work on a novel. His writing has appeared in The Adirondack Review, American Poetry Journal, Books & Culture, The Midwest Quarterly, Rio Grande Review, Seneca Review, and many others. A native New Yorker, he lives in Hartford City, Indiana. He is Associate Professor of English at Taylor University and Editor-in-Chief of Relief Journal

Poetry Prompt: Lost & Found
Write a poem in which something you lose, bury, or toss away comes back to you in another form. How does this frustrate and/or nourish you?

Indiana Humanities is celebrating National Poetry Month by sharing a poem and prompt every day in April. Indiana Poet Laureate Shari Wagner selected these poems and wrote the prompts.