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

The Same Inside

Walking to your place for a love feast 
I saw at a street corner 
an old beggar woman. 

I took her hand, 
kissed her delicate cheek, 
we talked, she was 
the same inside as I am, 
from the same kind, 
I sensed this instantly 
as a dog knows by scent 
another dog. 

I gave her money, 
I could not part from her. 
After all, one needs 
someone who is close. 

And then I no longer knew
why I was walking to your place.

Anna Swir
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anna-swir

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Next Read Around is March 25, 2022

My Thoughts

A chance encounter with a stranger can turn us off our path, especially when meeting someone for whom there is an instant connection; someone within whom we see ourselves. This is, of course, more likely when young; when the heart still roams the world as an apprentice. We are less entrenched in our world, more fluid, more willing to take a sudden turn. We are still open to surprise lovers, unexpected mentors, fast friends or moments when the heart inexplicably cracks open.

It is not that we become immune to distraction as we age. Distractions just lose their magic. They are doors we tend to close rather than open. Anna Swir’s poem, The Same Inside, captures a close encounter so powerful that it actually deters her from the journey to a waiting love feast. Her description of the moment with the old beggar woman is, however, itself a love feast. She leaves us with that moment when the heart is cracked open as if offering an invitation to recognize ourselves, to feel we are the same inside as is she, as is the beggar woman; that we may find ourselves on either end of that mirror—the one who sees herself in another and the other in whom one is recognized as oneself.

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write about a time when you were on a determined path and got distracted by something so compelling you forgot your goal, at least temporarily.

  2. Use the prompt, “Walking to your place for a love feast…” and write whatever might follow from there. What does anticipation of a “love feast” open inside of you or allow you to notice in the world you might not otherwise notice?

  3. Journal or write about an intimate moment with a complete stranger

  4. Journal or write about someone in whom you saw yourself or imagine such an encounter. Perhaps it was a version of your younger self or older self.

  5. Swir employs the analogy of the sense of smell a dog uses to instantly recognize one of its kind. What sense allows you to recognize someone is of the same kind as you? How do you know someone is like you, not in outer appearance, but on the inside?

  6. Swir states that we all need someone who is close. Journal or write about someone, real or imagined, who is close. How do you keep them close? 

  7. Journal or write about anything else that might inspire you from the poem or life.