April - Full Pink Moon –This name came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox,
which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for
this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg
Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time
that the shad swam upstream to spawn.
I have been waiting all year to write my blog for
this month because it is National Poetry Month and the story I am about to tell
happened to me last April. I knew as
soon as it happened that I would have next years April blog … I always worry
that I won’t have anything to write about so I was more than a little relieved!
John had such a gift with words and could use
these words to impact the lives of others. You only have to listen to the
lyrics of his songs to know that…but he wrote beautiful poetry too…and
apparently his poems were also able to move people… and that is why this story
is so perfect for this month.
Last year my office was in the high school, right
down the hall from the head of the English department (Kristy); and as we began
to chat we realized we had a lot in common…add to that …she was lovely, so who
wouldn’t like her! Well, Kristy wanted to make Poetry Month a school wide event
by putting poems everywhere in the school. Teachers were urged to submit
a favorite poem, if they had one…and I
considered using one of John’s because I thought that high school kids could
relate to the poetic part of writing music and I was even going to put the name
of John’s band on the poem in the hope that the kids would see that writing
poems may pay off someday!!
Well, I forgot about it until I showed up for
work the first day of April came and noticed a poem on everyone’s door… and I
had not even printed my poem… I kicked myself for not being more organized and
figured I had missed my opportunity. I confided how terrible I felt to a friend
who also knew Kristy and she advised me to still try to do it…then left to run
off some papers …well, who do you suppose was at the copy machine but good old
Kristy, who was making a copy of the exact poem that I was going to use with
the hope that I would let her put it on my door!
I couldn’t believe it! Not only was I surprised
that she was so thoughtful to think to look for a poem John wrote but to find
one… who knew he had anything on the web other than his RaRaRiot lyrics!
I was intrigued as to how Kristy found the poem
and she told me she just did a search on the web…which I immediately did as
well...I could not wait to find out how the heck John’s poem found its way to
the internet…and the result brought me to tears ……of any of the many, many,
publications that John has been mentioned in this one would mean the most to
him…not only because of the prestige that the Harvard Review commands but
because his childhood friend, Andrew, who had such a distinguished career at
Harvard (undergrad and law) thought enough of John’s words to use it as the
basis of his last article…it is worth reading so I have added it to this blog…it
is so well written and the sentiment was clearly what John was thinking when he
wrote his little poem… it just blew me away…to think that of all the thousands
of words that Andrew read during law school it was the lines that John wrote
years before he chose to use… John would be so proud of that…and honored (as are
we)
I saw Andrew’s mom one day and tried to tell her
how much that moved me…and I couldn’t even get it out…started to cry right in
the parking lot of the plaza in our downtown…I don’t have the ability with
words that John did….just hope that my tears said it all…and I also hope that
you will be moved as well….enjoy!
Andrew Kalloch wrote this on April 30, 2009
for the Harvard Review.
“Do you believe…
That mountains move at the
request of an honest heart?
That all the thoughts of your
lifetime surely cannot cease to exist when
your body alone has withered?
That all of the thoughts of your
lifetime have not gone unheard?”
-John Ryan Pike (1983-2007)
