AN APRIL FOOL

When days are warm but nights still cool
I'm just another April fool,
Listening for the first soft calls
of Chuck-will's-widow as dusk falls
across the firefly-lit fields.

In March, as stubborn Winter yields
reluctantly to Spring's advances,
life awakens and then dances,
dances like an April fool,
a carefree lad, cutting school.

And wind-blown flowers aside a pool,
in mirrored motley, as a fool,
dance as well to vernal song --
those strains, so distant and yet strong,
I recall from Springs afore.

Now I'll join in that song once more,
when blackberries blossom along the fence.
If in these days, I make no sense
just know me for an April Fool;
I'm but another April fool.

Stephen Brooke ©2010

A bit of a quickie, rhymed tetrameter (though not terribly strict in meter). I probably painted myself into a bit of a corner by repeating the 'April Fool' phrase -- there are only so many ways to rhyme it, resulting in a shorter poem than it might otherwise have been!