1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

What To Do

Wake up early, before the lights come on 
in the houses on the street that was once 
a farmers field at the edge of a marsh.

Wander from room to room, hoping to find 
words that could be enough to keep the soul 
alive, words that might be useful or kind 

in a world that is more wasteful and cruel every day.
Remind us that we are 
like grass that fades, fleeting clouds in the sky,

and then give us just one of those moments 
when we were paying attention, when we gave 
up everything to see the world in

a grain of sand or to behold 
a rainbow in the sky, the heart 
leaping up.

—Joyce Sutphen
http://www.joycesutphen.com/#

Please join Writing From The Inside Out by attending the read-around sessions on Friday afternoons. It’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional. If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Note: Next Read Around is:
April 9, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

I’m an early riser. I enjoy those moments before sunrise when the busy world is still slumbering, especially when the still cool air offers a strange rapture of attention, patiently anticipating daybreak while savoring the quiet darkness. It is my time to meditate or contemplate or sit sipping coffee while my mind wanders off into its own dark recesses. Often, I write sleepily, dictating a few words or lines at a time, as I doze and wake and write and doze and wake and write.

Just as Joyce Sutphen describes in her poem, What To Do, I seem to be wandering from room to room trying to figure it out, at once wanting and not wanting to give it all up and find a way back into the world. Sutphen’s poem made me realize I secretly long to be swept up in that strange rapture of attention cracking open with the dawn’s light. Every once in a while it happens and words that love each other so much they want to live together come leaping up from my heart onto the page and I send them off into the world flying from my hand on a paper airplane. 

Prompt Menu

  1. What moments in your day or your life do you allow yourself time to wander? Are you a morning person or a night person or...? Write a poem about such moments and how you experience them.

  2. Do some research or use your imagination to describe what the landscape where you now live was like before it was developed. Like a wine sommelier, what can you still taste or smell of that original landscape?

  3. We all have times when we are absent of purpose, as if wondering from room to room. The poet says she is trying to find words that keep the soul alive. What are you trying to find those moments?

  4. What words might be enough to keep your soul alive at this time in your life? What words might you offer that could be useful or kind when faced with a wasteful and cruel world?

  5. Write an ode to the transient quality of things in nature, like the fading grass and fleeting clouds in Sutphen’s poem , and describe what this awareness provokes in you. 

  6. Describe a moment when you were paying attention in the way the poet describes and you gave up everything to see the world in what was right in front of you.

  7. As usual, write about anything else that inspires you from the poem or from anywhere  in life.