Poetry is honey for the soul (6) - Diane Reynolds

           Poetry is honey for the soul

Diane Reynolds is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and Publishers Weekly among other publications. She teaches literature and writing at the university level and also holds an MDiv from Earlham School of Religion. Her book, "The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer" has been released last month.

I asked Diane if she might consider participating in "One poem a day: readers turned bloggers". She accepted and gave me two suggestions: one is Johnson's Creation (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/creation). The other is a poem she wrote after cutting and arranging wild irises into a jug or pitcher. Diane also gave photos and ¨painting (irises by Van Gogh), underlining that they might illustrate both poems.

Of course, even if she says she is no poet, I chose her text.

Purple

irises

suspended

in a pitcher

amid leaves and nature's green wire spirals.

On the pitcher

blue and white glaze

Woman reading

Cat, tail curled upward

Sheep lying in a patch of shade.

Irises,

Picked from a meadow

Abutting cut lawn.

Massed in a factory pot.

Against artifice nature etched.