2026 National Poetry Month, Day 15 "Skies"

NPM 2026, Day 15 "Skies"

Today we now shift the month's celebration from outward to inward, to the poets among us, to the creative urge and adventurous spirit.

Each day I'll make a suggestion for an inspiration. Today it's "skies."

Hope you find the prompt inspirational and celebratory. Feel free to create and share an original poem. Or tell an anecdote. Find a connection with an existing poem you know and share that. Or post a link to music, film, essay, book. The sky's the limit.

Or, simply relax, view these images, meditate a few minutes.

Today is also an opportunity to thank the LibraryThing developers and the recently released feature that allows 5 images per Talk message with a robust editor during the upload. @timspalding @conceptdawg, thank you for the added enrichment of LT.

NPM 2026, Day 15 "Skies" Source and info

Edward Hopper artist https://www.edwardhopper.net/route-6-eastham.jsp
Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967} Route 6, Eastham (1941) oil on canvas 68.6 x 96.5 cm. It is housed in the collection of the Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Nasa photo https://www.planetary.org/articles/the-best-images-from-artemis-ii
Christina Koch views Earth from Orion. NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch looks at Earth from the window of the Orion spacecraft on its way to the Moon during the Artemis II mission. At the time, Koch was already farther away than any woman has ever been from our planet. Image: NASA

Charles Burchfield artist https://burchfieldpenney.org/art-and-artists/artwork/object:l2010-001-045-the-sp...
Charles E. Burchfield (American, 1893-1967) The Sphinx and the Milky Way 1946 Opaque and transparent watercolor, chalk, and crayon on wove watercolor paper, 52 5/8 x 44 3/4 inches (132 x 111.8 cm)

Thomas Hart Benton artist https://www.henryadamsart.com/museum-aquisitions/thomas-hart-benton-june-morning...
Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889 – 1975), June Morning, 1945 Oil on Masonite, 42 x 48 in.

Walter De Maria artist https://www.diaart.org/visit/visit-our-locations-sites/walter-de-maria-the-light...
Walter De Maria (American 1925-2013) The Lightning Field (1977) is a work of Land Art situated in a remote area of the high desert of western New Mexico. It is comprised of 400 polished stainless-steel poles installed in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer. Photo: John Cliett, courtesy Dia Art Foundation, New York

A haiku, written while I contemplated the inspiration of "skies"

9 p.m. April rain
down in the earth, in the dark--
wildflower seeds wake.

Skies

a matter of days
for the ground to change to green
from the April rain

in the humid heat
summer sun is washed away
replaced by gentle rays

vivid blue skies leave
cloud cover brings cool grey days
reveals winter sun

everything grows
golden hues transformed, new grass
bending in the wind.

>4 TonjaE: So glad you shared! It's always a celebration when you post a poem.

April rains begin the wildflowers going back to bed there in Australia, don't they? I love that I have to think about that. Reminds me how BIG our world is and there is someone across it whose company I enjoy.

This piece I just discovered, an installation/concept type art by Anton Kusters titled "The Blue Skies Project" I found incredibly moving and thought-provoking. I can imagine someone could write a very powerful ekphratic poem based on it. All those blue skies, up where God is supposed to live...

https://medium.com/vantage/the-blue-skies-project-reimagining-history-and-trauma...

And this photograph (no, it's not AI), titled "Bliss" is considered the most viewed photograph in the world! Do you recognize it?



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_(photograph)#

Not quite poetry, but the theme of skies makes me think of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. His writing is so lyrical that it fills the same place in my mind as poetry does, especially Wind, Sand, and Stars and some of his other reflections on aviation.

>6 DebiCates: Ironic that the visitor must bend over, look down rather than up to see those blue skies. I haven't read about the installation, but that seems a suitable metaphor for working through one's trauma.

>8 saskia17: I've only read The Little Prince and must confess I didn't "get it" the first time through. I was too hung up with it being advice for children. It is but...is much more than that. I'm glad I decided to re-read it, to dip back in and see what I missed, and that was a lot. It's been an inspiration.

I trust your recommendation. I'd like to read Wind, Sand, and Stars and I bet it will be wonderful. Just added to my library's TBR.

>9 elenchus: Hm, that must be purposeful...does seem ironic. Why not put them up on the ceiling...

I didn't read that full article myself. I was just move by the concept. Maybe as we look down, we are taking the divine view, but instead of seeing individuals and horror, we are seeing what they might have seen...a sky empty of God.

I need to read that article I linked to.

>7 DebiCates: Yes, it was the first thing I changed on any new Windows installation for a long time 😂

>12 SandraArdnas: LOL! Not your cup of tea then? It is rather bland. I look for bland in my desktop background choices. It's hard to distinguish icons if there is a lot going on in the image. The newer default Windows desktops (esp the one at my work and we don't have permissions to change them) are awful. What are they thinking?

>13 DebiCates: If only it was bland. Clashing pretty saturated colors for what's supposed to be a peaceful vista scream until I put something my eyes like resting on a lot, ahaha. I seriously hated it. People hated Clippy, I hated that wallpaper with a fire of a thousand suns. Space photos, whether Earth or other planets, were usually my go-to for the first change. They look gorgeous and there's plenty of dark space around for icons

>14 SandraArdnas: Now that you mention it, I am picky about my colors too. My preference is fuzzy melded swaths of color. Not "things" just an easy-on-eyes background, something like watercolor for its soothing effect. I can definitely see that space would be a good choice too. And we have all those new ones from Artemis II now. 💙