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

Meeting The Light Completely

Even the long-beloved 
was once 
an unrecognized stranger. 

Just so, the chipped lip 
of a blue glazed cup, 
blown field 
of yellow curtain, 
might also, 
flooding and falling, 
ruin your heart. 

A table painted with roses, 
an empty clothesline. 
Each time, 
the found world surprises—
that is its nature. 

And then 
what is said by all lovers: 
“What fools we were, not to have seen.“

—Jane Hirschfield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Hirshfield

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:
July 23, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. It did not have the look and feel of paradise at the time. There were weeds to pull and wolves at the door. Then, a big yellow taxi drives off with a part of our life. We wake up one morning to an empty chair and wonder how we failed to appreciate the preciousness of our moments together or how we could let paper cuts shred the heart. “Isn’t that the way it goes?” As Joni Mitchell says, “We don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.” Then, we fall into a gulf of grief over a dangling shoelace because we can not tie up the loose ends. 

Jane Hirschfield’s poem, Meeting The Light Completely, comes across like the I-told-you-so voice inside that says “Love couldn’t wait.” But it also reminds us that something wonderful can come out of the drab of our lives when the light switches on and a great beauty emerges. It’s a two way street—jolted by loss, touched by love—when the “found world” surprises, opens our eyes to the ruins where we smell the fresh wet after the rain, see the yellow buds flowering on the crumbled walls, and hear the receding footsteps walking down the hall, when the heart is taken and we suddenly, in that moment, meet the light completely.

Prompt Menu

  1. Write about the moment you met your spouse or lover; especially the moment they moved from stranger to beloved.

  2. Find a well-worn object or something that has been damaged in some way and write about how the damage or flaw changes your feeling about it.

  3. Write an ode to a favorite piece of clothing or loved thing in your life.

  4. What does the phrase “the found world” mean? Use the phrase as a prompt to write about the found world.

  5. What does it mean to “meet the light completely?” Use the prhase as a prompt. Or write about a time when you had an experienct that fits that description. I met the light completely when…

  6. Write a poem that ends with, or includes, a line that all lover’s might say.

  7. Use the prompt, “what fools we were, not to have seen…”

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