Reruns: May Posts Worth Revisiting

May is National Bike Month, which may be why some years I didn't do a lot of writing. I did write more posts than I'm listing here but they're often specific to an event so they don't hold up over time. In 2018 I did some bike travel so you get the start of the trip here, the rest in June. 

A name-change note: I went to work for the Bicycle Alliance of Washington in 2012, then led the organization through a name change to Washington Bikes in 2013-2014. I've left the two names in my archive links for historical accuracy and the bit of nostalgia.

• “Do Not Drive Through, This Poem’s In The Way”: Transportation Poems Keep Rolling In (Bike Style, May 6, 2023)
• Counting up the Years (May 1, 2022)
• On the Road Again: Getting Ready for a Washington State Bike + Ferry + Train Vacation (Bike Style, May 19, 2018)
• Day One: Southwest Seattle to Mukilteo (Bike Style, May 25, 2018)
• Day Two: Mukilteo to Port Townsend (Bike Style, May 26, 2018)
• Day Three: Port Townsend to Port Angeles (Bike Style, May 27, 2018)
• Day Four: Port Angeles to Lake Crescent (Bike Style, May 28, 2018)
• Days Five and Six: Lake Crescent to Victoria, BC (Bike Style, May 30, 2018)
• Reclaiming Yoga (May 20, 2018)
• Play Bike Bingo! Great Excuse for a Bikespedition (Bike Style, May 10, 2018)
• #WaveBack, Washington: Make the First of Each Month Friendly (Washington Bikes, May 31, 2015)
• Goodbye, Mom (May 19, 2014)
• Reviews Are Coming In: Great Bike Travel Book to Help You Plan Your Washington State Bike Touring (Washington Bikes May 2, 2014)
• 30 Days of Biking April 2014: I Did It! (Bike Style May 1, 2014)
• Commute Challenge Lessons Learned: Part 2 (on Bicycle Alliance of Washington May 13, 2013)
• Commute Challenge Lessons Learned: Part 1 (on Bicycle Alliance of Washington May 12, 2013)
• Getting Started Bike Commuting: A Blogspedition Inside Bike Style (Bike Style, May 28, 2012)
• Sure Footing: The Blogspedition Goes Shoe Shopping (on Bike Style Spokane, May 28, 2011)
• The Search for the Perfect Purse: It May Just be a Bike Bag (on Bike Style Spokane, May 17, 2011)
• It's Snot Pretty (on Bike Style Spokane May 11, 2011)
• Bustin' the Style Boundaries, Believe It or Not (on Bike Style Spokane May 8, 2011)
• Riding in Skirts: Today's Reactions (on Bike Style Spokane May 5, 2011)
• I'm Part Dutch, You Know: What Do YOU Wear to Bike? (May 24, 2010)

A Year of Poems: May

If April is the cruellest month, May is sunshine and spring, hope and flowers, and quite often the subject of a poet's celebratory observations. 

Here's my problem with poems about May: They're so often sappy. Flowers and birds in rhyming couplets. Don't get me wrong, I love flowers and birds and I'm not against the occasional rhyming couplet but it gets repetitious. I skipped over a lot of May poems that were a little too hop-te-skippety for my taste. And so, so many are named "May". So many. 

You're getting some birds and flowers and spring. I also had to include  "May 1968" by Sharon Olds, which isn't about the month at all but about events in May, and "May 1972" by James Schuyler, which is as timely now as it was when he wrote it.

"May and the Poets" by James Henry Leigh Hunt

May's in all the Italian books:—
She has old and modern nooks,
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,
In happy places they call shelves,

"May Day" by Sara Teasdale

For how can I be sure
  I shall see again
The world on the first of May
  Shining after the rain?

"In the Month of May" by Robert Bly

In the month of May when all leaves open,
I see when I walk how well all things
lean on each other, how the bees work,
the fish make their living the first day.
Monarchs fly high; then I understand
I love you with what in me is unfinished.

"May" by Jonathan Galassi

Ivy from last summer clogs the pool,
brewing a loamy, wormy, tea-leaf mulch
soft to the touch

and rank with interface of rut and rot.
The month after the month they say is cruel
is and is not.

"May Day" by Tess Taylor

white lilacs curdle in pre-summer heat.
The parade I barely noticed was beginning
is already halfway down the street.

"May to April" by Philip Frenau

Without your showers, I breed no flowers,
    Each field a barren waste appears;
If you don't weep, my blossoms sleep,
    They take such pleasures in your tears.

As your decay made room for May,
    So I must part with all that’s mine:
My balmy breeze, my blooming trees
    To torrid suns their sweets resign!

"Under the Willows [May is a pious fraud of the almanac]" by James Russell Lowell

May is a pious fraud of the almanac,
A ghastly parody of real Spring
Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind;
Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date,
And, with her handful of anemones,
Herself as shivery, steal into the sun,
The season need but turn his hourglass round,

"Song on May Morning" by John Milton

Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger,
  Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
  The Flowry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.

"The Month of May" by Wendy Cope

So carpe diem, gather buds, make hay.
The world is glorious. Compare, contrast
December with the merry month of May.
Now is the time, now is the time to play.

"For a Day in May" by Ruth Earnshaw

Shadow of white lilac
cast by May moonlight,
fettering me, dancing 
in the dew-cold grass
never let me go.

"To this May" by W.S. Merwin

it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time

"May" by Kerry Hardie

All hardship, hunger, treachery of winter forgotten.
This unfounded conviction: forgiveness, hope.

"May 1968" by Sharon Olds

When the Dean said we could not cross campus
until the students gave up the buildings,
we lay down, in the street,
we said the cops will enter this gate
over us.

"May 1972" by James Schuyler

Soft May mists are here again.
There, the war goes on.
Beside the privet the creamy
white tulips are extra
fine this year. There,
foliage curls blackened back:

A Year of Poems

• A Year of Poems: January
• A Year of Poems: February
• A Year of Poems: March 
• A Year of Poems: April