M Christine Delea's Blog, page 19

What Do I Care for Morning by Helene Johnson

What Do I Care for Morning

by Helene Johnson

What do I care for morning,

For a shivering aspen tree,

For sun flowers and sumac

Opening greedily?

What do I care for morning,

For the glare of the rising sun,

For a sparrow’s noisy prating,

For another day begun?

Give me the beauty of evening,

The cool consummation of night,

And the moon like a love-sick lady,

Listless and wan and white.

Give me a little valley

Huddled beside a hill,

Like a monk in a monastery,

Safe and contented and still,

Give...

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

(published in The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, Penguin, 2018)

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel a...

Cinco de Mayo!: Creative Prompt

I think Cinco de Mayo is a lot like Saint Patrick's Day: it's bigger in American than it is in its origin country; people of all heritages celebrate it; for many people, it's really just a big party; and few people know the actual history behind the holiday. (I say all of this in a non-judgy way. If you want me to judge you, tell me you prefer oatmeal raisin cookies to chocolate chip cookies.) This has nothing to do with the prompt--just one of my tangential observations!

To celebrate and be cr...

After I Came Back from Iceland by Sheenagh Pugh

After I Came Back from Iceland

by Sheenagh Pugh

published in Poetry For the Earth, edited by Sara Dunn with Alan Scholefield, Fawcett Columbine, 1991

After I came back from Iceland,

I couldn’t stop talking. It was the light,

you see, the light and the air. I tried to put it

into poems, even, but you couldn’t write

the waterfall on White River, blinding

and glacial, nor the clean toy town

with the resplendent harbour for its glass.

You couldn’t write how the black lava shone,

nor how th...

At the Movies: Creative Prompt

Do you remember the first movie you saw in a theater? The first movie date you had? How about the first DVD movie you bought? The movie based on a favorite book? A musical that had you singing for days afterwards? A movie you walked out on? A scary movie you barely saw because you could not watch most of it? How about the first movie that really resonated with you, one in which you wondered how part of your soul had been filmed without you knowing?

For this week's creative prompt, write/paint/s...

In Perpetual Spring by Amy Gerstler

In Perpetual Spring

by Amy Gerstler

(published in her book, Bitter Angel, North Point Press, 1990)

Gardens are also good places

to sulk. You pass beds of

spiky voodoo lilies   

and trip over the roots   

of a sweet gum tree,   

in search of medieval   

plants whose leaves,   

when they drop off   

turn into birds

if they fall on land,

and colored carp if they   

plop into water.

Suddenly the archetypal   

human desire for peace   

with every other species   

wells up in you. The lion   

and...

After Looking into a Book Belonging to My Great-Grandfather, Eli Eliakim Plutzik by Hyam Plutzik

After Looking into a Book Belonging to My Great-Grandfather, Eli Eliakim Plutzik

by Hyam Plutzik

(published in his book, Apples from Shinar, Wesleyan UP, 1959 and here)

I am troubled by the blank fields, the speechless graves.

Since the names were carved upon wood, there is no word

For the thousand years that shaped this scribbling fist

And the eyes staring at strange places and times

Beyond the veldt dragging to Poland.

Lovers of words make simple peace with death,

At last demanding, to clo...

A Friend in Need: Creative Prompt

Although most people know it as "Dogs Playing Poker," Cassius Marcellus Coolidge's 1903 painting is actually called A Friend in Need. It is part of a series of 18 paintings of dogs playing cards.

There are a number of famous art pieces in the world that feature dogs, but this is one of the few that so completely humanizes them. They are drinking, smoking, and the 2 at the front of the painting are cheating (hence the painting's title).

This human attitude towards animals is in great contrast ...

On the Recovery of Canis Familiaris from Sputnik 2, 1957 by Bailey Blumenstock

On the Recovery of Canis Familiaris  from Sputnik 2, 1957

by Bailey Blumenstock

(published in The Maine Review, Issue 6.1, 2020)

Before the launch,

the mission scientist bathed her,

dabbed her with alcohol and bruises of iodine.

He kissed her nose.

She had played with his children.

In photographs, the hatch is open and she is posed,

or is posing, one ear folded, the other heavenward.

At launch, the saucer-sized porthole fogged with her panting.

For one hundred and sixty-three days after my fa...

I tell my children by Victoria Chang

I tell my children

by Victoria Chang

published in her 2020 book, Obit (Copper Canyon Press)

I tell my children

that hope is like a blue skirt,

it can twirl and twirl,

that men like to open it,

take it apart, and wound it.

I tell my children

that sometimes I too can hope,

that sometimes nothing

moves but my love for someone,

and the light from the dead star.