April in Eastwood

by RICHARD CLARKE

When April with its sweet rains,
its cooler evenings, shrinking days,
tells the leaves to fade and fall
while tibouchina and easter daisies,
blushing purple, pink, pale,
shade clusters of stonecrop,
the dew settles, the dust goes,
we pick carrots for winter soup,
wear rosemary for remembrance,
don ANZAC day poppies out of season –
the febrile glare of February forgotten…
for April is the kindest month,
brings mellow fruitfulness each morning,
the month my eldest child was born.