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

Be Like A Flower

What is the greatest gift of the season?
Do not jump to answer without
stepping out into the day.

Then, do as Kahlil Gibran
suggested: ”Be like a flower and
turn your face to the sun.”

Bees will come.

Let them lift the dust
from your eyes.

They will take it to a hive
you never see and make it
into nectar you never taste.

Is it your failing that you
do not know what you give
to the world?

Your gifts may take days,
weeks, months, years, even
lifetimes to come to life.

The best you can do is
be like the flower and
turn your face to the sun.

Be Like A Flower is included in my forthcoming book, Everything Is Shouting, Wake Up to be released in June 2022.

Next Read Around is April 1, 2022

My Thoughts

Early spring in Sacramento is one of my favorite times of year. The fire season has not yet hit its stride and the air is still breathable. The mornings are still cool enough for a jacket and the days or not yet so oppressively hot . Winter barren branches sprout new  leaves and fields of flowers begin to bud and bloom. Morning bird chatter gathers momentum.  This New life bursts out of the patience of seeds nurtured in dark soil, arises out of the culmination of instincts and urges inspired by warming days and changing weather and tiny transformations we never see. It’s easy to take delight in what becomes apparent and forget how the suddenness of revelation emerges out of an unseen history. I was inspired to write Be Like A Flower by a quote from Khalil Gibran’s 1923 classic, The Prophet. It served as a seed that worked its way under the surface for almost 100 years before expressing another blossom in me. You could argue that it is natural because his work is famous but Gibran could never have guessed the specifics. We truly do not know how our presence and our gifts will blossom in the future.

Please join me online at The Sacramento Poetry Center
on Monday April 4, 2022 @ 7:30 PM
for a reading of selected poems from the book.

https://us04web.zoom.us/j/7638733462
Password: r3trnofsdv

I am honored to share the stage with William O’ Daly, a fabulous poet known for his superb translations of Pablo Neruda’s work. You can learn more about Bill’s work here:

http://williamodaly.com

Prompt Menu

1. Next time you see a flower, pause and ponder the unseen history that has blossomed and how this might relate to your life (for instance, what kind of flower are you?) or consider how your radiance initiates an unseen history for future blossoms you will never see or know.

2. If each season has a gift, journal or write a poem about the gift of spring. You could use the stem a sentence: The greatest gift of spring is…

3. Pick something from life that you can use in a personification poem. Start the poem with the stem sentence: Be like a… and…

4. Journal or write a poem about someone’s presence or work that impacted you in a way they would never know.

5. Use the idea of an unseen history as your inspiration and write whatever comes to mind from or about that idea.

6. Make up a history to go with some every day item or object in the world around you. For instance, the history of the wood in a piece of furniture. Or the hands and steps it took for a piece of fruit to make its way to you. How can you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste that history?

7. Journal or write a poem based on the idea that the consequences of your actions are unknown by starting with the phrase: The best you can do…

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