The coronavirus has kept us from attending school on campus this Spring, but it has not stopped our community’s creativity!  Below are five excellent poems that were submitted to the 2020 Delta, Delbarton’s annual literary magazine.  The current situation makes it impossible to distribute hard copies of this year’s Delta, but we wanted to showcase the talent of our young poets.  Delbarton Delta, we salute you!

I Before e

By: Ryan Readlinger, 7th grade

There’s so much

In a name.

A hidden past

Just waiting

To be discovered

I before e,

E before i.

Never knowing which

Is right and which

Is wrong.

Never knowing who

I truly am.

Changed long ago

In order to fit in,

Yet all it does

Is make me

Stand out.

Did I come

From a line

Of spies, kings or just

An old Saxon fantasy?

I before e,

E before I.

Where did I

Come from,

And what am I

Supposed to become.

Feelings of Winter

By: Lorenzo Petrucci, 7th grade

The leaves start getting scared

 Of being buried in the strange

White substance that smells like nothing,

The trees, 

Worried about tripping over themselves 

Because of the brawny winds of the storm,

The wild animals, 

Stuffing their mouths

With food, getting ready

For the long slumber ahead,

The clouds,

Ecstatic to let out the cold wave,

The rivers,

Exuberant about freezing,

and running no more,

The soil, 

Joyful that the plants will soon die and be free,

The firewood, 

Elated that it will finally

Be put to use and get warm and cozy

While releasing the intoxicating plume of smokey air.

New York City

By: John Cuzzocrea, 7th grade

Millions of people, walk around 

In this city that doesn’t sleep,

It must be tiring,

But still, she stays awake waiting and watching,

The millions of people that go by 

Every single day,

She waits and watches the rich and the poor,

The young and the old, 

The brisk and bold, 

The rich and cowardly,

But nevertheless, she loves them all,  

Her lights shine bright,

She sees the millions walking, talking, enjoying 

Their lives which are so short compared to hers,

She’s seen over billions of lives,

Even the founders of the city itself, their children too,

She hears the cries of the babies, 

The screams of the murdered,

The yells of the free-spirited,

The sirens of the fire trucks,

Slowly she’ll tire out and pass on,

But that time is not now,

For now, she will stay awake watching and waiting,

The city that she loves.

Migration Meadow

By: Jack Tonzola. 7th grade

I often stroll on this grassy

field just outside of my house,

The blades as pale as gold,

With the natural smell of the foliage

The sound of migrating geese flying over my head,

I follow them as their shadow moves

toward the nearby corn field beyond and

their collective squawk grows faint,

They were far gone to the West but

I could still hear them chattering,

It was April by the time they’d left for good,

It’s October, the prairie is paralyzed,

No sound over the meadow.

Then it comes back,

The melody of migration.

Black Holes

By: Ikechukwu Nnaeto, Sophomore

Black Holes are mysterious. 

They make me curious

Why, where do they go?

Do you float in darkness, to and fro

Black Holes, Black as the crow

As mysterious as life itself 

Where do they go?

Sometimes I wonder where I can find one?

Black Holes, even light can’t escape you,

They say if a human encountered one, he would get ripped to pieces by gravity, 

Is it true?

You ravenous being!

The mystery of black holes.