Enchanted April...that fanciful month

"Like Peaches and Cream" photo by the author, K L Wood

There was a lovely movie made back in 1991 by the title, Enchanted April, in which a disparate group of English women come together for an Italian holiday in the month of April. The film, based on the 1922 novel, The Enchanted April by British author, Elizabeth von Arnim, follows the four women as they experience life-changing and life-affirming transformations in a nearly magical way. 

"April Shower" photo by K L Wood

There’s something about this month, by turns gentle and tempestuous, that feels magical to me. It coaxes me to believe in the mystical, the ephemeral, the world just beyond our earthly sight. Granted, as my husband will attest, it doesn’t take a big push for me to delve head and heart-first into enchanted realms. 

But, in April, I see fairies winking among the cherry blossoms, their tiny chariots pulled by buzzing honeybees. I see good-natured gnomes peeking out from beneath their toadstool umbrellas in the gentle April rain. Even the ubiquitous greenish-yellow pollen coating anything left stationary for a few moments, becomes pixie dust in my eyes. (I know. That’s a stretch, especially for the red-nosed allergy-sufferers, but it’s the way I choose to view the world.)

Here is a glimpse into my current Work-In-Progress, Murmuration, a book that falls within the magical/mythical realism genre. This passage takes place in Scotland in the month of June, but a Highlands’ June is a North Carolina April.

“Silver feathers of mist curled around Sarah’s shoulders and caressed her face with its moist silk. High above, a full moon cast down its sterling light as she passed, barefoot and silent, through the luminous glow of the garden toward the high-hedged maze.

Somewhere in its deep heart, lay her future.”

I will close out this post with a poem by Lucy Maude Montgomery, the author of the beloved Anne of Green Gables book series. I can tell from this poem, written about 1904, that as Anne, herself, might say, Lucy and I must be kindred spirits.

An April Night

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

The moon comes up o'er the deeps of the woods,
And the long, low dingles that hide in the hills,
Where the ancient beeches are moist with buds
Over the pools and the whimpering rills;

And with her the mists, like dryads that creep
From their oaks, or the spirits of pine-hid springs,
Who hold, while the eyes of the world are asleep,
With the wind on the hills their gay revelings.

Down on the marshlands with flicker and glow
Wanders Will-o'-the-Wisp through the night,
Seeking for witch-gold lost long ago
By the glimmer of goblin lantern-light.

The night is a sorceress, dusk-eyed and dear,
Akin to all eerie and elfin things,
Who weaves about us in meadow and mere
The spell of a hundred vanished Springs.

"Toadstool" photo by K L Wood

Thanks for stopping by. Y’all come back, now!

Kate