April Fool's Day

April.  Much has been written and sung about this month.  Mostly treacly happy-talk about showers and flowers and Paris and springtime, etc.  Since Easter usually occurs in April and since Buddha's birthday ALWAYS does, the fourth month also enjoys considerable religious prestige among those who believe in spiritual as well as agricultural rebirth.

Let us not, however, forget T.S. Eliot's sober and bitter judgment that "April is the cruellest month..."

Yes, April IS cruel--and not just because I always get older on April 13, or because Abraham Lincoln stopped getting older on April 15.

But rather, because in Minnesota at least, this supposedly happy month almost always disappoints--on each and every one of its 30 dishonest days, bringing blizzards instead of bunnies, floods instead of flowers. And just when we are SO ready for Whitman's field-sprouts and lilacs, BAM:  April snows on our Easter parade.

Haha.  April Fool. Poisson d'Avril.  I hate April.