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

Of Gravity And Light

What we need most, we learn from the menial tasks; 
the novice raking sand in Buddhist text,
or sweeping leaves, his hands chilled to the bone, 
while understanding hovers out of reach; 
the changeling in a folktale, chopping logs, 
poised at the dizzy edge of transformation; 

and everything they do is gravity: 
swaying above the darkness of the well 
to haul the bucket in; guiding the broom; 
finding the bodies kinship with the earth 
beneath their feet, the lattice of a world 
where nothing turns or stands outside the whole; 

and when the insight comes, they carry on 
with what’s at hand: the gravel path; the fire; 
knowing the soul is no more difficult 
than water, or the fig tree by the well 
that stood for decades, barren and inert, 
till every branch was answered in the stars.

John Burnside
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burnside

Note: Next Read Around is:
July 2, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

We can easily lose connection to life when we devalue menial tasks— like doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, or bringing water to the table — and consider them beneath us or as a drag against gravity in our flight to greater things. We can learn so much about our relationship to life in little, everyday acts, if only our minds were not spinning off in a thousand different directions. In the simple act of presence, we come home to ourselves. There is a greater magic in finding kinship with the earth in the everyday than in those rare and isolated moments in nature, or when some grand blessing restores our presence. John Burnsides poem, Of Gravity And Light, is a reminder of the simple, yet profound, power of engagement in the everyday of our lives.

Enlightenment is often depicted as a one-time infusion of light that forever transforms the enlightened in many of the Buddhist teaching tales. Those supernova insights are seemingly so rare we still talk about the birth of light in the Buddha thousands of years ago. It is more likely, if there is any sliver of enlightenment for the rest of us, that it will come in little flashes of remembering and forgetting, of falling into darkness and rising into light. Perhaps the only difference between before and after is that we re more likley to choose our lives and more willing to grace the smallest act with precious intent.

Prompt Menu

1. What have you learned, or what might you need to learn, from doing menial tasks? Or pick some “menial task” and describe in poetic detail.

2. Describe a time when you felt as if you were hovering on the dizzy edge of transformation

3. Imagine an understanding that is just out of reach, like a word on the tip of the tongue, and write a poem about that experience.

4. Write a poem as if your body is speaking to you about it’s kinship with the earth.

5. Write about an insight that changed you on the inside even though you carried on as usual on the outside

6. In what way is the soul like water? What could it mean to say the soul is “no more difficult than water?”

7. Find something “inert” in the world around you, something that has been around for decades, perhaps something once living or something abandoned or unused, and grace it with a poem.

8. Imagine branches in you or in your life that have been answered in the stars. What wold the branches of your life say if they shared the answers they have received from the stars.

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