This April is the 24th National Poetry Month, a celebration established and organized by the Academy of American Poets.  Throughout the month, there are a number of specific events including Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 18, and the Dear Poet project.  Every school day this month, the King Street Chronicle will publish one poem in honor of National Poetry Month.  

Moving, 1841
Upper School English Teacher Dr. Cristina J. Baptista
All water is a poetry,
a movement toward the unknown
question, in itself a stasis because everything seems uniform,
each wave so complex, yet as sinister
as the next.
What tells us
how far we’ve gone
is not a measure of time or space
but of the emotional range
our frames have frequented,
as if knotting in a chip log
twisting around each artery.
How we know we are not free
comes in how often our hands
are bound to lines.
Memory breed hyperbole,
lines of cantos and scripture
flooding fast to fill the space.
Little minds fall into the rut—
or blessing—of nostalgia.
But this can be our saving and savior,
a rush to preserve.
The only difference comes when a whale
rides in, bent like a question
mark, to the line of sight, when the look-out can shout
the urgent warning and command,
when men once more get to test their bones
and rise to the boats.
Every moment brings an aching for something
that matters, for a meaning
just beyond the self:
Take what you get from the sea
and hope it gets you home.

– Sydney Kim, Opinions Editor
Featured Image by Sydney Kim ’20