Is That a Poem in your Pocket? Or...
- Fenyx Quinn
- Apr 10
- 2 min read
Welcome to Poetry Month. While sipping a blend from Compass Coffee this morning and perusing the lit blogs about town, I was informed by Christopher Luna, VanWA's own collage artist extraordinaire as well as Clark County, WA's first Poet Laureate, that today is Poem in your Pocket Day. According to the Academy of American Poets on their website, Poets.org (Linked below):
"Poem in Your Pocket Day was initiated in April 2002 by the Office of the
Mayor, in partnership with the New York City Departments of Cultural
Affairs and Education, as part of the city’s National Poetry Month
celebration.
The Academy of American Poets, which launched National Poetry Month
in 1996, took Poem in Your Pocket Day to all fifty United States in 2008,
encouraging individuals across the country to join in and channel their inner
bard.
Every April, on Poem in Your Pocket Day, people celebrate by selecting a poem, carry-ing it with them, and sharing it with others throughout the day at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, and on social media using the hashtag #PocketPoem."
Immediately, my compulsion to everyday carry a little black book that I have compiled over years, filled with my favorite poems, quotes from literature, and even important movies, TV shows, and songs was validated. The Poems of Invictus (William Ernest Henley), Still I Rise (Maya Angelou), and The Sounding Sea (Eric William Barnum) rush to the mind and I want to stand up on this table and sound a barbaric YAWP over the coffee patrons and espresso bars of the world, or at least this coffee shop. But I digress, alas I might find the end of "Poem in your Pocket Day" with no pockets and hands tied up in a straitjacket. So...
I stay seated and sipping, brew billowing down my bellows below like scalding rain.
Thinking of the many souls here, outside in planes, boats, and cars down the lane...
The streetcar line that used to be, the monorail that might become.
The many people that shaped this one.
This drop in the stratosphere of a cosmos of stardust and molecules,
stirred by God's hiccups, layups, and emotionless rules.
This one, that saying so much he must,
but is yet just a drop in the stardust,
a hiccup of emotion in the sea,
of the many souls getting coffee.
"Finding Constellations through a Mass Spectrometer"
Written on the spot, today, for you, whomever reads these lines. I challenge you to do the same. Be happy to see someone. Write a poem and put it in your pocket. Or find one that you love and share with someone you love, or hate, there's ones for that too. It's like apps, there's a poem for every emotion... and if not, write one, Wordsmith! Find your Mojo... You got this.
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Tonight in VanWA @ 7pm - Art at the Cave 108 Evergreen BLVD