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

Consequences

Afterward,
I found under my left shoulder 
the most curious wound. 
As though I had leaned against 
some whirring thing, 
it bleeds secretly. 
Nobody knows its name

Afterward,
for a reason more right than rational, 
I thought of that fat German 
in his ill-fitting overcoat 
in the woods near Vienna, realizing 
that the birds were going farther and farther away, and 
no matter how fast he walked 
he couldn’t keep up.

How does any of us live in this world? 
One thing compensates for another, I suppose. 
Sometimes what’s wrong does not hurt at all, but rather 
shines like a new moon.

I often think of Beethoven 
rising, when he couldn’t sleep, 
stumbling through the dust and crumpled papers, 
yawning, settling at the piano, 
inking in rapidly note after note after note.

—Mary Oliver

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 Dec 3, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

In the middle of an early attempt at repair of a bicycle around age 8, I noticed red droplets hitting the ground. Seeking the source, I saw that I had split my finger and it was bleeding. I felt no pain before that moment. A sharp sting ensued immediately upon my notice and I yelped. To this day, I can still see the thin line from where my skin stitched itself back together.

Perception plays a vital role in the experience of pain. Life‘s method of teaching is through consequences. If we peel off the wrapping of dread we put around what’s “wrong,” we may find that “what’s wrong does not hurt at all, but rather shines like a new moon,“ as Mary Oliver suggests in her poem Consequences. When Oliver describes a sleepless night for Beethoven that turns out a composition, she hints at the fact that he gradually went deaf. He composed the incomparable 5th Symphony in the period between 1804 and 1808 when he was already clearly losing his hearing; and he went on to compose some of the world’s greatest symphonies after he was completely deaf.

It is what we do with the “afterward” that matters most when life goes awry. Sometimes, it might take a few steps, an afterward after other afterwards and we find ourselves with something beautiful we might never have acquired without composing the consequences note after note after note.

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write a poem about consequences. You can use the start, “Afterward,”… and then free write from there.

  2. Write about a time when you discovered a wound or a mysterious pain and could not identify what caused it or how it happened.

  3. Journal or write a poem about a wound in your life that “bleeds secretly.” You can describe how it does so and what it might need to heal.

  4. Personify a hurt or wound by giving it a name. Have a conversation with it.

  5. Journal or write about something that you have chased after that only seems farther and farther away no matter how fast you chase it.

  6. Use MaryOliver’s question as your prompt: How does any of us live in this world?

  7. Journal or write a poem about compensation. Describe an experience in which one thing compensated for another.

  8. Describe something in your life that went wrong, but did not hurt at all. Oanver uses the interesting image of shining like a new moon, which is the time when the moon is not reflecting the sun’s light; when the moon is actually dark. Consider what light comes from the dark.

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