Tag Archives: NaPoWriMo Challenge 2026

Pondering Emily Dickinson & Context for Poem “Shade Garden” (April 9, 2026)

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Last fall, Tim and I journeyed east, and I was able to fulfill a long-held dream of visiting the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachussetts. Comprised of two houses–the Homestead, where Dickinson lived all her life, and the Evergreens, built by her brother, Austin, for his family, connected by shady gardens, this small plot of ground is very near to the graveyard where Dickinson is buried. Collectively, these rooted structures comprise a portal that allows the visitor to time travel back more than a century and to understand how one American poet’s vision of eternal verities were grounded in a particular time and place.

The Homestead
The Evergreens

At the museum shop, I purchased two delightful postcards (above) depicting Emily Dickinson with whimsy and vibrant color, and they are now always out where I can see them, near a photograph Tim took of Julia and me so long ago it seems like a different age.

Today’s poem, “Shade Garden,” arose from my thinking about that journey, about the protection shade can offer against prying eyes, and also about the covert humor extant in the word play of so many of Dickinson’s poems.

Below are a few images of the autumnal 2025 trip to Amherst.

Until tomorrow,

LESLIE

Leaving a Susan B. Anthony (Dickinson’s Contemporary) Coin, Token of Determined Vision

Recent Clouds and Context for the Poem “Whiplash Weather” (April 6, 2026)

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The Minnesota countryside yesterday, between Rochester and Northfield, offered mesmerizing cloudscapes and inspired today’s poem: “Whiplash Weather.” The images here are in chronological order.

Okay! “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.” It is still dark out here. Time for the clarity that only “clouds in my coffee” can offer! (Apologies to lyrical goddesses Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon.)

Until tomorrow,

LESLIE

Happy Easter, 2026! and Context for Poem “Golden Lamp”

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My Kitchen This Week
Outside Our Front Door–Siberian Scilla
Across from the Northfield Public Library
“Jon Bone Jovi ” (Spotted this week at Johnson Spinal Care Clinic)

Context for Today’s Poem, “Golden Lamp”

Neighborhood Forsythia on April Fools’ Day
Neighborhood Forsythia Yesterday–Squint and You Can See Snow!

Each year, I am entranced by this display of forsythia in a garden two blocks from my house. The color is startling and brilliant, and, unlike, is complement, the blue and white scilla that carpets our city, it is boldly upright.

Yesterday, I got to see it behind a haze of spring snow–a true emblem of our weather this April.

Happy Easter!

LESLIE

Travel to Philly and Context for Poem, “ICI,” (April 4, 2026)

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ICI Cafe, Philadelphia, 2016 (Leslie Schultz)

ICI Macarons & Cafe is a Philadelphia icon that Julia and I stumbled upon in March of 2016 during a college visit to the east coast. I stumbled on prints–not footprints but stacks of photograph– this morning as Tim helped me find images that might spark today’s poem. I had forgotten completely about this moment and this place, but the photograph brought it back, down to the very taste of the mint macaron and the creamy punch of the cafe latte.

Just this morning, I discovered that this splendid place, ICI, is an immigrant success story–aren’t we all?

If you scroll down, you’ll see a delivery vehicle for another culinary success story in Philadephia, A Peace of Pizza, who offer delicious fare AND a way to pay it forward by feeding homeless people. (Click on the link to see the NPR story on them.) Philadelphia is one of our oldest cities, and it is still alive with our founding values.

I also reflected that as exciting and educational as travel is for me, its most reliable effect is the way it gives me a fresh sense of the value of home–the essential need to be ‘at home’ wherever you are. (Or, as I first read on a Mary Englebreit card, “Wherever you go, there you are.”)

Below are a few of my favorite images from that trip ten years ago to Philadelphia, a city so important to our national identity, our identification with personal liberty and collective “liberty and justice for all,” the pledge we all learned in kindergarten.

All these images and insights–infused for me with memory and whimsy–merged into the poem for today, “ICI.”

LESLIE

(I suspect the images from this trip might spark another poem this month–stay tuned!)

The Cloud Appreciation Society and Context for Poem, “Enlightenment” (April 3, 2026)

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The Cloud Appreciation Society is a non-profit devoted to celebrating the beauty and science of clouds. Some years ago, a generous friend (thank you, Ann!) who has known me well for more than 4 decades gifted me with a subscription to the daily “Cloud-a-Day” post. Since then, I have become even more committed to photographing what I would otherwise forget: these information laden wisps of beauty passing overhead, no two every quite the same.

Regular readers might remember three previous posts mentioning this sterling organization.

Context for the Poem “Enlightenment:

This morning, I awoke thinking the elusive term “enlightenment” before the sun was up, and also about the way the sky looked here two days ago, just before the soaking rains arrived delivering an inch or more of ice-cold water, and I was glad to have snapped a few images of the eastern view from my front porch.