In Verses & Song

  For National Poetry Month, here’s a new poem and new reviews of poetry books I’m reading! I hope you’ll be inspired to read and share poems, and maybe write some of your own.  *** Click Here to Listen to the Reading of My Poem Below Awake and Dreaming There’s a sleepiness in the sun’s rays, a soft warmth in this hour. Day settling in, wrapping me in a cloak of light. A hush is broken  by chitters, high and low-voiced calls from hidden singers in tall trees.  I think of the cat, her black outline stretched across the couch in sleep,  consider the habits and dreams of nocturnal creatures. How my brain  kept buzzing, thoughts twisting and turning overnight, blankets tangled,  sheets bunched. How like a prowling creature I became, awake  and wandering like the cat mewing at 3:30am. How in the brightness of day these nocturnal moments seem an alternate universe, not the same one t hat spins with a tapestry of white cloud stitched on blue sky. Not the same one where birdsong lingers, wind-