What Do April Showers Bring?

Raindrops

Rain,

Like tears,

Is running

Down my window:

Pain.

-- Brian P. Cleary 

Raindrops is a lantern poem: five lines of non-rhyming poetry shaped like a Japanese lantern.  The first line of a lantern has one syllable, followed by lines of two, three, and four syllables, with the fifth-- and final-- line returning to one syllable. Like haiku, lantern poems often speak of nature... in this case, it's the drip-drip-splish-splash of nature falling from a cloudy gray sky. 

Ah, well.  We all know that April showers bring May flowers.  We've also learned that April showers fall to earth, mix with dirt, and make... mud.  We begin our celebration of Muddy Day with a selection of sticky, slidy, slickery mud poems: 

I'm in the Mood for Mud 

I'm in the mood for mud--

I'm mad for sloggy, boggy crud.

I wish to wallow in a mire,

To slip and slosh my heart's desire.

To slide and slop inside the slush,

To run amok amid the mush.

And when I'm done I'll run upstairs,

Where in the tub I'll wash my hairs,

And back and legs and arms and chin,

Then run back in the mud again.

-- Douglas Florian 

The Muddy Puddle 

I am sitting

In the middle

Of a rather Muddy

Puddle,

With my bottom

Full of bubbles

And my rubbers

Full of Mud,

While my jacket

And my sweater

Go on slowly

Getting wetter

As I very

Slowly settle

To the Bottom

Of the Mud.

And I find that

What a person

With a puddle

Round his middle

Thinks of mostly

In the muddle

Is the Muddi-

Ness of Mud.

-- Dennis Lee

Mud

I like mud.

   I like it on my clothes.

I like it on my fingers.

   I like it in my toes.

Dirt's pretty ordinary

   And dust's a dud.

For a really good mess-up

   I like mud.

-- John Smith

Our final mud-covered poem was written by the Newbery-Honor-winning author of The Egypt Game and other Lafayette LMC favorites:

Poem to Mud 

Poem to mud--

Poem to ooze--

Patted in pies, or coating your shoes.

Poem to slooze--

Poem to crud--

Fed by a leak, or spread by a flood.

Wherever, whenever, whyever it goes,

Stirred by your finger, or strained by your toes,

There's nothing sloppier, slipperier, floppier,

There's nothing slickier, stickier, thickier,

There's nothing quickier to make grown-ups sickier,

Trulier coolier,

Than wonderful mud.

-- Zilpha Keatly Snyder

Whew.  That's a lot of mud.  We don't want to be sticks-in-the-mud (an idiom meaning we don't want to try new activities), but perhaps we can move on to a topic that's a little less messy.  Good news for Poetry Paraders: April showers sometimes bring... rainbows! A rainbow is a beautiful, poetic trick of science and nature, a multi-colored arc of light appearing in the sky when sunlight shines on raindrops in the Earth's atmosphere: 

I'm Waiting for a Rainbow

I'm waiting for a rainbow.

I'm waiting for the sun.

I'm waiting for the rain to stop

So I can play and run.

I know I should be patient,

But waiting's such a pain.

I guess I'll have to pass the time

Appreciating rain. 

-- Judy Lalli

A famous nineteenth-century English poet imagined our next Rainbow Day poem:

The Rainbow

Boats sail on the rivers,

     And ships sail on the seas;

But clouds that sail across the sky

     Are prettier far than these.

There are bridges on the rivers,

     As pretty as you please;

But the bow that bridges heaven,

     And overtops the trees,

And builds a road from earth to sky,

     Is prettier far than these.

-- Christina G. Rossetti

Poetry Paraders are well-acquainted with the colors of Rainbow Day-- and with A Man Named Roy G. Biv:

Red is the color of apples so delicious
Orange is the color of oranges and fishes 
Yellow is the color of the sun in the sky 
But don't look at it now, it'll burn the retina of your eye! 
Green is the color of the grass and trees 
Blue is the color of blueberries 
Indigo is just a name for really dark blue

And Violet rhymes with nothing
But neither DO YOU!

-- Rowan Carrick

So, what do those April showers bring?  The answer is clear as mud (an idiom meaning that it's difficult to understand) and leaves us chasing rainbows (an idiom meaning we're looking for something exciting and rewarding). Happy Muddy Day and Rainbow Day, Poetry Paraders!