Peace Embracing Plenty, by Mike Lewis-Beck

Peace Embracing Plenty, by Peter Paul Rubens (Flanders) 1634

Peace Embracing Plenty

It’s not petit putti fighting on a celestial ceiling. Nor chubby babies in a round-the-crib romp. It’s Peace in Person in romantic embrace with Plenty, both curly-headed and pink but of different minds. Peace seems heavy, full-bottomed, mounting the charge. Plenty seems startled, dreamy, young—unaware of the promise of his cornucopia—horn overflowing with apples, figs, wild herbs. Peace looks away, to the inevitable, columns collapsing around her—flaccid. Thus, the worry in Plenty’s eye.

Mike Lewis-Beck

Mike Lewis-Beck writes from Iowa City, where he gardens in the summer and cooks in the winter. He has pieces in American Journal of Poetry, Apalachee Review, Aromatica Poetica, Black Bough, Columba, Cortland Review, Chariton Review, Ekphrastic Review, Guesthouse, Heavy Feather Review,, Inquisitive Eater, Pennine Platform, Seminary Ridge Review, Southword,  and Wapsipinicon Almanac, among other venues. He has two books of poems, Rural Routes, and Shorter and Sweeter, published by Alexandria Quarterly Press.