Spring came in hot on the heels of autumn, stepping over winter as if it never happened, and teased us with early blooms and glorious days. Winter did give us a little rain, a few frosty mornings, but not enough to assuage our dread of another dry, hot summer. All the more reason to live in the moment. On one of those glorious days, I woke up with an ear worm, you know, a song you can’t get out of your head? It was “Who Will Buy?� from the musical, Oliver! It kept coming back to me through the week. I felt so content and the song was the perfect reflection of that feeling. Who will buy this wonderful morning? Such a sky you never did see. Who will tie it up with a ribbon And put it in a box for me? So I could see it at my leisure Whenever things go wrong And I would keep it as a treasure To last my whole life long Who will buy this wonderful feeling? I’m so high I swear I could fly Me, oh, my, I don’t want to lose it So what am I to do, to keep the sky so blue There must be someone who will BUY! Like spring, April has emerged from March with some 80-degree days and I, for one, whine about it but carry on. What I like about April and what The Canyon Chronicle allows me to indulge, is that it is National Poetry Month, a young celebration that started in 1996, when President Bill Clinton was in office. April 2021 marks the 25th annual celebration of poets and poetry. National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, was born two years later, in 1998. At 23, she moved the world when she read her poem, “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country,� at President Biden’s inauguration. This issue starts a month of poetry (pages 8-9). Why poetry? For one thing, you can write music for it. Think about all of those poems we like to sing! Even without music, it may have rhyme, with or without reason. It has cadence, plays on sounds and myriad rhythms. Poems use literary devices—similes, metaphors, alliteration, repetitive refrains, and sometimes maddening obscurities that hurt your head trying to figure them out. Going back to the simple song that makes your heart sing, we have a wealth of poets around us. All we had to do was say the word, and 25 poets and more coming, obliged us. What a gift. Some of our poets in Part 1 of a three-part round, are your neighbors; others are people we’ve never met and will likely never hear of again once we’ve read their poems. Welcome to April. gofundme.com/f/newspaper-launch