It’s that time of year.

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and poems are being sent around like love letters in the wind. National Poetry Month has been a favorite of mine for as long as I can remember. In fact, any excuse to be as extra about poems or books or writers in general pretty much makes anything a favorite of mine. The month is almost halfway over, though, and the world’s most beautiful poems have yet to be discovered by a large part of the population.

If you’re part of this group, then this is for you. Here are five poems that I feel should be shared with the general populace. I hope they inspire you to take part in National Poetry Month for the rest of April, or at least take a few seconds to send a loved one a poem.

1. "Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now" by Matthew Olzmann

Most likely, you think we hated the elephant,

the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations

of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction.

It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing

but benzene, mercury, the stomachs

of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic.

You probably doubt that we were capable of joy,

but I assure you we were.

We still had the night sky back then,

and like our ancestors, we admired

its illuminated doodles

of scorpion outlines and upside-down ladles.

Absolutely, there were some forests left!

Absolutely, we still had some lakes!

I’m saying, it wasn’t all lead paint and sulfur dioxide.

There were bees back then, and they pollinated

a euphoria of flowers so we might

contemplate the great mysteries and finally ask,

“Hey guys, what’s transcendence?”

And then all the bees were dead.

2. "the valley of its making" by Nate Marshall

the people in the streets

are plucked up like

radishes from dark earth,

heads beat the purplish-red

of ripeness. the women lead

the stupid & brutish to a

future they don’t deserve.

the organized are still

unbearably human, they

still fuck & hurt & harm

& are not actually sorry.

the people still fight

each other too much &

the system not enough

& too often it is not a fight

but a bullet. too many men

want to be in the front

& don’t want to march

anywhere in particular.

some of us have degrees

& noses to look down.

so many want a version

of old days that never

existed. many are still unwilling

to grow a vocabulary for personhood,

even from the words already in them.

so many will deny they to a sibling

simply because. our people are

messy & messed up & a mess.

nothing about our people is romantic

& it shouldn’t be. our people deserve

poetry without meter. we deserve our

own jagged rhythm & our own uneven

walk toward sun. you make happening happen.

we happen to love. this is our greatest

action.

3. "Saudade" by Erika L. Sánchez

In the republic of flowers I studied

the secrets of hanging clothes I didn’t

know if it was raining or someone

was frying eggs I held the skulls

of words that mean nothing you left

between the hour of the ox and the hour

of the rat I heard the sound of two

braids I watched it rain through

a mirror am I asking to be spared

or am I asking to be spread your body

smelled like cathedrals and I kept

your photo in a bottle of mezcal

semen-salt wolf’s teeth you should have

touched my eyes until they blistered

kissed the skin of my instep for thousands

of years sealed honey never spoils

won’t crystallize I saw myself snapping

a swan’s neck I needed to air out

my eyes the droplets on a spiderweb

and the grace they held who gave me

permission to be this person to drag

my misfortune on this leash made of gold

4. "Sonnet VI" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand

Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore

Alone upon the threshold of my door

Of individual life, I shall command

The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand

Serenely in the sunshine as before,

Without the sense of that which I forbore—

Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land

Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine

With pulses that beat double. What I do

And what I dream include thee, as the wine

Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue

God for myself, He hears that name of thine,

And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

5. "As To Why We Will Not Stop (Making The Hats)" by Sophie Cabot Black

This time it does not begin with the beaver

Instead only halfway up the mountain

Where the sheep we keep each year come through

Winter enough to answer us, enough

For us to shear, deft before the coming storm,

To take away from the body what it did not know

It grew and then astonished each spring to feel

The quickening of the lamb, the heft of

Sudden weight crossing one more patch

Of snow. All with an eye out

For the cougar or some such animal

Of which the DNA is no longer

What it might have been, the coyote now

As part dog part wolf

Already commonplace. We have come to know the truth

As no longer true— the old ways do not work

Against the new. How to reconcile the bear

As she comes down to what we now call ours

And how to prepare for the unforeseen

As we throw each sheep handily on their back

To begin at the belly—fleece to shear,

To wash, and pick, to card, to bale, to weigh,

To the depot where all will be spun, dyed

Into the wool we want, knowing it can be done

Again and again without much death

For the sheep she rises, shakes herself

Back into where she was before: grass, lamb;

Watches until we have pulled away,

As we head back down the mountain—

And in something like ability, or capacity,

The condition of being human, or female,

Or both, we want to knit this out, into

Dawn light, into a long stream

Of making sense, into where we will go next,

Into skeins of design and colors

Of what blood can mean, pinks

Such as rose or carmine, wanton or nearly red,

Timid or raw, healing or newly born,

Scarlet, blaze, bloom, or shell, or blush,

Like the small fingers of a wakening child,

Each stitch to repeat, purl and dispatch,

To get this done, and into that which

We can call sustainable, so those from behind

Can choose from the many hues; likewise

To walk forward with covered or uncovered heads.