5/9/25

ode to April


Poetry
Lili Raynaud

Today is like a New Yorker cover by Sempé

pink and yellow tulips popping from the green like stemmed Easter eggs
So joyful

It is warm enough for the jazzman to play his saxophone in the park
out by the dirty benches and the daffodil and magnolia
and cold air and warm sun

chlorophyll coursing through the concrete

Alive
from the inside
much like I am
Again

today it is
Impossible not to find romance in the trills and meanders
of the jazzman
as he fills the park with Chet Baker

I may dream a million dreams but how can they come true
Impossible to name or number the feeling
of watching life return in tufts of green and white and blue

For there will never ever be another you
except to say that today is like a New Yorker cover by Sempé

or like that one by Garrett Price
the one where the painter lays in the grass with his upturned nose turned up to the blossoms

and to think all this is mine for much less

than 8 dollars and 99 cents.




Lili Raynaud is a student at NYU studying Journalism, Politics, and Creative Writing. In her free time, she enjoys going on walks, eating Asian food, and wistfully reading Proust on the Metro-North. She does the New York Times crossword every Monday, and tends to write poetry about the same thing twice. Her work can be found in Same Faces Collective, A Partager Zine, and The Weasel!