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

Over The Weather

We forget about the spaciousness 
above the clouds 

but it’s up there. The suns up there too. 

When words we hear don’t fit the day, 
when we worry 
what we did or didn’t do, 
what if we close our eyes, 
say any word we love 
that makes us feel calm, 
slip it into the atmosphere 
and rise? 

Creamy miles of quiet. 
Giant swoop of blue.

Naomi Shihab Nye
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/naomi-shihab-nye

Note: Next Read Around is:
Sep 17, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

For most of the 30 years that I have lived in the Sacramento area, I wasn’t concerned about the weather. I only really paid attention if I needed to for some reason. Checking the weather is now a daily requisite.  Extreme weather patterns with catastrophic effects are driving the lives of many around the planet. Nye’s poem was written before the woes we are  currently experiencing with climate change. Her inspiration was more likely the phrase “under the weather;” which refers to being sick. So her poem strikes me as timely given the confluence of climate change and Covid. She turns the table on the metaphor with the title “over the weather” offering a  perfect way for us writers, journalers, and poets to weather our troubles: We can speak truth with words that fit the day, even when there are raging fires and devastating hurricanes, but we can also speak words we love, words that rise above plumes of smoke and dark clouds, words that bring calm to our hearts and remind us of greater things. If any medium is fit for our world at this time, it is poetry and art.

Prompt Menu

1. How do you keep an awareness of spaciousness and keep above the clouds when the fears of the world are closing in on you? What helps you to do that? Write about the difficulty (or ease) of staying “above the weather” in trying times.

2. Task yourself with writing words that fit a particular day. Try making notes during the course of the day and then combining those notes into a poem. Or task yourself to do this over the course of three or four days days and write a stanza devoted to each day. You could use the title: Words fit For Today.

3. In conversation with others or by eavesdropping on others, notice how people describe the day, especially how quickly the description deviates from sensory experience and factual observation into stories about the impact or affects from conditions. Do people talk about negative affects? Do they put a positive psin on it? Do those elaborations seem to fit the day or not?

4. Track your worries. Write what worries you these days or what you should or should not do, especially given the pandemic, climate change, and daily reports of catastrophes. 

5. Write an ode to the weather or to clmate change. Personify the weather and describe its intention, its desires, its frets and fears.

6. Make a list of words you love. The list could include words you love for what they mean, but also words you live for the way they sound, or feel, or the way they shape your mouth in speaking. Incorporate those words into a poem or a prose piece.

7. What particular words or phrases bring you a sense of calm or peace? What, other than words, brings you a sense of calm or peace, especially in tring times.

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