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

Everything Is Waiting For You

Your great mistake is to act the drama 
as if you were alone. As if life 
were a progressive and cunning crime 
with no witness to the tiny hidden 
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny 
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely, 
even you, at times, have felt the ground array; 
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding 
your solo voice. You must note 
the way the soapdish enables you, 
or the window latch grants you freedom. 
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity. 
The stairs are your mentor of things 
to come, the doors have always been there 
to frighten you and invite you, 
and the tiny speaker in the phone 
is your dream ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into 
the conversation. The kettle is singing 
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and 
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world or unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

—David Whyte
https://davidwhyte.com

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:

Next Read Around is Nov 12, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

Intimacy is the home of poetry. Even many of those who cut a wide swath between them selves and their poetic heart, who otherwise have no interest in poetry, find themselves turning to poetry in the torrent of grief or the clutches of love. These two polarities share a common quality: a deep, profound, and often raw intimacy with life. Any human life spared of these extremes is an untouchable innocence, an immaturity that can never truly blossom. When the power of life strips our walls away in its immeasurable tide, or when our guilt or guile tear at our roots, and we feel utterly alone in the world, poetry speaks the ocean to us, puts us in the company of all lonely hearts throughout time; when smitten, poetry gives us the courage to swim the sea of desire and step on the shore of a new land. Our intimacy with life is not reserved only for moments of emotional avalanche. To me, the real bounty of poetry is the way it transforms our relationship to the mundane world. As David Whyte points out in his poem, Everything Is Waiting For You, the “great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.” When we are willing to taste all the varietals of intimacy, every thing in life comes alive. The poem tells us this level of intimacy is engaged through the discipline of alertness in the midst of the familiar, of bringing all our senses to the meeting ground of the moment and easing into conversation with the swelling presence of things around us. Everything is waiting for us to put down the weight of our aloneness, to create a space without rivalry, to be the one true lover with whom they bring themselves, and we bring ourselves, to life.

Prompt Menu

1. Journal or write a poem about how you “act the drama as if you were alone.” How and when do you isolate yourself?

2. Journalor write a poem about a time when you felt abandoned, or about the experience of abandonment. Consider what you must claim and what you must deny to feel abandoned.

3. Journal or write a poem about what it dislike to be in, or feel, the intimacy of your surroundings.You can use the prompt, “In the intimacy of my surroundeings, I…”

4. Write about a time when the chorus around you, literally or metaphorically, crowded out your solo voice.

5. If alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity, what other hidden disciplines might you name? What is the hidden discipline of exploration? Of conversation? Of intimacy?

6. In what way do window latches grant you freedom? How do doors frighten you and invite you? What things in your home, like the soapdish in the poem, enable you and in what way?

7. Journal or write a poem about the weight of aloneness. What happpens when you put aloneness on a scale? What is it measured against? How many units of aloneness do you need and how many are too much?

8. Ease into conversation with something around you and share what transpires.

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