some northern climates as the snows melt it is sometimes seen as herald of the mud season, a rather unromantic image.

T.S. Elliot refers to it as "the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of dead land, mixing memory and desire." Robert Frost writes of its unpredicability, yo-yoing us between May warmth and March chills.

Edna St. Vincent Millay in a poem entitled Spring has this to say about April:

"To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redress of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The Sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself
Is nothing
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs,
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers."

  But I would rather say,

What a glorious idiot April is,
breaking through the death time, the cold time,
with its novel fingertips of warmth,
and its carefree scattering of colors on earth's northern spring floors. Yes, April is the yellow month of brightness,
the primrose month,
rekindling sunshine in the soul,
rousing up the spirit to the wonder of a leaf, a bud,
to the mystery of an everlasting life.
April is a link month between the living and the resting time in death, holding for us this mystery in a gentle balance,
so we can drink it deeply to carry us through the more intensive months of life or death.
April is an Easter month,
A month of Triduum,
Holding for us the Divine Word
of life without end in the midst of what appears like death.
April is the month of Alleluia,
The Christ has died and risen,
The soul remembers its own dyings and its risings,
And the hope of Easter sunrise
Awakens in the heart. 

Sr Liz Ferguson, OP