Julia Park Tracey is Alameda’s Poet Laureate.

April is National Poetry Month. As your official Poet Laureate, I’d like to invite you, Alamedans, to crack open a poetry book and read one, just once, this month.

I remember Easter Sunday

It was colorful and fun

The new life that I’d begun

In my new cage.

I was just a little thing

When they brought me
from the store

And they put me on the floor

In my cage.

They would take me out to play

Love and pet me all the time

Then at day’s end I would climb

In my cage.

But as days and weeks went by

I saw less of them it seemed

Of their loving touch I dreamed

In my cage.

In the night outside their house