michael belongie

Michael Belongie

BIO: All Things Living, Mighty and Small encompasses for readers of poet Michael Belongie new poems in his fourth collection, relating to nature, personal perspectives, and aire of songs for creation. A teacher and poet of Wisconsin, Michael and his wife Jane have lived in Beaver Dam for the past thirty years.
       In addition to teaching literature and writing poetry, he has served in the past on the national advisory board of the New York-based Scholastic magazine, Literary Cavalcade, and is drama critic for The Daily Citizen in Beaver Dam.
       Other  experiences include designing and instructing through a broadcast and interactive television course, Power Poetry, from Randolph High School. He is also three-time president of the Southwestern Inservice Educational Organization, which plans for teacher inservices with nationally recognized speakers, including poets Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Sharon Olds, and Billy Collins.
       Active in promoting poetry awareness and appreciation, Michael continues to value his involvement in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, having served as president and in other officer roles for the past twenty five years. Michael has been asked to be a WFOP calendar editor for 2007 .
       Recently retired from thirty-four years of teaching literature at Randolph High School, Michael volunteers at Saint Benedict Monastery of Madison, where he assists the efforts to nurture over 60 acres of restored prairie. 

Emily Dickinson's blueprint for
the prairie was simply clover and a bee;
precious prairie land another catechism
to study; all things living, mighty and small.
              "Returning  to Holy Ground"

PUBLICATIONS:
Wisconsin Academy Review
124th, 125th, 126th, 127th Annual Conference Publications, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters
Wisconsin Poets Calendar: 1987- 2001, 2003
The Benedictine Bridge
A fourth collection, the chapbook All Things Living Mighty And Small, is due out soon.

poetpow@charter.net
    POEMS:

Credo

Creating one more poem
may not change or even
alter history's course.
   
Distilling the spirit
from air into word may
not inebriate a mind.

This poem may
not capture essence
or seasons or soul.

Nonetheless, awaiting
a muse is faith-building,
one syllable at a time.

 

Returning to Holy Ground

Restoring prairie at Saint Benedict's Center
yields cyclical waves of flower heads and
native grasses, swaying from leaden
breezes of humid July.
   
Seeding from many hands eager
to return the acreage to which
driven, early settlers labored
staunchly to clear and cultivate.
This land nurtured offers new bounty.
Again, prairie land is channeled
for a harvest, earthly facets
of creator's gifting sparkle.
   
To homesteaders, clearing the
oak and tilling the fertile soil
drew on fortitude and faith, faith
strung on the telegraph wire to follow.
Try as they might the harnessed horses
trod the prairie under as the dreamers
and the poets painted still lifes,
beckoning back to the past.

Effigy mounds of Winnebago
remind how ancient and profound
the mystery that binds soul to
earthly search for harmony.
Emily Dickinson's blueprint for
the prairie was simply clover and a bee;
precious prairie land another catechism
to study: all things living, mighty and small.

               This poem may
               not capture essence
               or seasons or soul.
               Nonetheless, awaiting
               a muse is faith building,
               one syllable at a time.
                       "Credo"