April is poetry month, and we're marking the occasion with a poetry challenge. We want you to send us your poems on the theme "emerge," and we will read some of them on our air.

88 year-old Evelyn Kandel is the Nassau County Poet Laureate. She's a Marine veteran and teaches poetry at adult education classes at the local library in Great Neck. She's also the author of four books of poetry, and working on a fifth. She joined WNYC's Michael Hill to share one of her poems, and read one submitted by one of our listeners.

If Only

If only I were 30
Or at least had purple hair.
If only I were funky
And made someone stare.
Things would be different
I could celebrate being “in”.

If only I could be blogging
Or at least reading on U-tube.
If only I were edgy and indifferent
With a contemptuous attitude.

If only my poems
were posted on the web
Filled with lines so fun and flirty
Even a tiny bit dirty.

If only
I were 30!

—Evelyn Kandel, Nassau County Poet Laureate

Are we forever in Egypt?
Can we never reach the Promised Land
But only yearn for it
Longing to cross over, to arrive,
To celebrate the dignity and worth
Of every tribe and every man and every woman
To be one and to grant Us-ness
To all?

Cross over my brothers and sisters, cross over.

—Lowell Williams