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

Pause Now

Pause now
long enough to turn 
your attention to the quiet 
underneath the noise 
of the world; 

to listen to the whispered secrets of your soul;
to return to what lives at your core; 
and to embrace, once again, 
the unspoken and unbroken 
vows of the heart.

Pause now 
long enough to drop the effort 
to patch up the torn
and tattered edges 
of your life;

to let what is incomplete in you
be not your prison walls 
but your gateway 
to all that is yet to come.

Pause now
long enough to let your breath
be waves of the infinite,
flowing in and out, 
until you arrive, at last, 
at the place where all questions end 
and you, yourself, become endless...

© Nick LeForce

Note: Next Read Around is:
July 23, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

The past year has been a wildly wobbly spinning top, life often seemingly on the verge of collapse. The pandemic, with its killer trends and recurring surges, has put our collective lives on pause. We may have had enough of a pause after year of the pandemic, but the virus does not agree hitting us with another variant currently spreading like wildfire. Add the extreme weather conditions—droughts, floods, fires, and other calamities of biblical proportion—and it seems as if Mother Nature has had enough. It’s as if she is wagging her finger at us, telling us to go to our rooms and think about what we are doing before she hits the reset button.

The word “pause" may be the wrong word for our situation because it is defined as a temporary stop or interruption, which implies that things will pick up where they left off. We’ve already had our share of stops and starts: economies closing and opening, mandates for mask wearing and sheltering in place enforced and lifted and then enforced again, as we try to get back to “normal." And it is natural to be fed up with it all. Of course, this does not have to be the case. The real question is: what do we do with the pause. For instance, I, along with a few of my friends, are thinking about selling our houses and moving out of California, Utah, and Oregon to the a place where we could create a community together. So, for this week’s prompts, I offer my own poem, Pause Now, as an invitation to consciously and intentionally take a pause and to use the “stopped” moments for reflection, particularly to reflect on our relationship with ourselves, with each other, and with life.

Prompt Menu

1. Use the word “pause” as a prompt and write about what the word means to you. Or take the refrain “pause now…” from the poem to use it as a prompt.

2. Write about what is on “pause” in your life at this time and what you are actively (or passively) doing to use the pause, including what purpose it might serve for you.

3. What whispered secrets might you soul share with you if you listened and heard it speak.

4. Write a poem about what “lives at your core.” You can use the prompt phrase, “At my core…”

5. Write a list poem describing the unspoken and unbroken vows of the heart.

6. What, if anything, is torn and tattered in your life? How do you try to patch up the torn and tatttered edges of your life?

7. Imagine you could somehow let go of all that is unfinished in your life. Would it bring relief? Dread? Or…? What do you imagine life would be like if you felt complete? Would you still have passion and desire? Similarly, what do you imagine it would be like if you enetered a space where all questions ended for you?

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