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

My Life

Sometimes I see it as a straight line 
drawn with a pencil and a ruler 
transecting the circle of the world 

or as a finger piercing 
a smoke ring, casual, inquisitive 

but then the sun will come out 
or the phone will ring 
and I will cease to wonder 

if it is one thing, 
a large ball of air and memory, 
or many things, 
a string of small farming towns, 
a dark road winding through them. 

Let us say it is a field 
I have been hoeing every day, 
hoeing and singing, 
then going to sleep in one of its furrows, 

or now that it is more than half over, 
a partially open door, 
rain dripping from the eaves. 

Like yours, it could be anything, 
a nest with one egg, 
a hallway that leads to a thousand rooms—
whatever happens to float into view 
when I close my eyes 

or look out a window 
for more than a few minutes 
so that some days I think 
it must be everything and nothing at once. 

But this morning, sitting up in bed, 
wearing my black sweater and my glasses, 
the curtains drawn and the windows up, 

I am a lake, my poem is an empty boat, 
and my life is the breeze that blows 
through the whole scene 

stirring everything it touches —
the surface of the water, the limp sail,
even the heavy, leafy trees along the shore.

Note: Next Read Around is:
July 16, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

The task of describing one’s life can be difficult, at least it is for me, in part because it is a process and not a thing. My view of my life changes as I age or by situation or from my mood in the moment. It is hard to to put into words something with which I am so intimate and that seems so complex and about which I am often thoroughly confused. Perhaps the best tool for the job is metaphor and poetry.

Billy Collins applies these these tools exquisitely in the poem, My Life. He strikes a beautiful balance between detachment and engagement in viewing his life, deftly weaving between the metaphoric and the mundane. He nails one of the most perplexing aspects of summing up a life by wondering whether it is one thing or many things. My life feels like one thing as I live it and many things as I think about it. To put my life in perspective, I have to step back from it or float above it, and detach from it. But then, as Collins’ says, the sun comes out or the phone rings and I cease to wonder because I am engaged in it.

Perhaps the movement between detachment and engagement is the warp and weave we use to make sense of it all or, at least, to clothe and decorate our lives. But, it is a magic fabric that can, as Collins points out, change into anything. Perhaps the real reason this task is so daunting is this unfettered freedom to make of it what we may because it is everything and nothing at once. Collins turns that unsettled  freedom into a luxury. We have the privilege to weave the whole of our lives into the moments of our lives —yes, even the mundane moments — through the magic of metaphor and poetry. May you live the poetry of life.

—Billy Collins
https://billycollinspoetry.com

Billy Collins also offers a masterclass on writing and his one minute intro to that course is a good way to get started writing for this prompt. Although I have not taken the class, I am sure it is wonderful.

Prompt Menu

1. Consider the geometry of your life and describe it in terms of its size, shape, dimension, etc.

2. Combine metaphor and actual in describing your life. For instance, write two stanzas, each using a different metaphor for your life, and one with actual. Or stack it the other way: two actual and one metaphor; Or write two metaphor, two actual, two metaphor, etc. Find your own combination.

3. Write the ways you try to make sense out of your life? Use the prompt: The best way to make sense out of may life is… Use it repeatedly as if there are multiple “best” ways.

4. If your life were one thing, what would it be?

5. If your life were a field in which you are hoeing and singing, what is your song? What crop(s) are you growing? What can you harvest out of the living of your life?

6. Collins talks about his life being more than half-way over and how that changes his perspective. Where are you on your lifeline and how does conceiving it that way change your perception. Compare metaphors from different phases of your life.

7. Set the intent to let your life reveal itself to you as an image that might appear when you close your eyes or as you look out a window. Hold the intent until something surprising shows up.

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