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

There Is Some Kiss We Want

There is some kiss we want 
with our whole lives, 
the touch of spirit on the body. 

Seawater begs the pearl 
to break its shell. 

And the lily, how passionately 
it needs some wild darling! 

At night, I open the window 
and ask the moon to come 
and press its face against mine. 

Breathe into me. 
Close the language - door 
and open the love window. 

The moon won't use the door, 
only the window.

—Rumi
Translated by Coleman Banks

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 May 6, 2022

My Thoughts

Spring has always been associated with love, with its ravishing beauty and flourish of life, with blossoms budding, birds building nests, bees and butterflies flitting from flower to flower, and days warming with invitational allure. Perhaps the deepest human craving is to be loved.  We may cover it over with our yearning for things as if a shopping spree could somehow fill the yawning cavern; we may bemoan the lack of it in a rude exchange that sends us into tizzy for hours; we may hide our need of it behind the curtained windows and locked doors where we shelter in place against all the plagues of the world. As Rumi so eloquently points out, there is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit, the sense of being fully, deeply, completely, and perpetually loved. The key message of many spiritual masters is that we are already and continually blessed by such a kiss.  The challenge is that it is near impossible for us to be so vulnerable even when spirit begs us to break our shell and open our love window because we know, on some deep level, it will change us forever, and change….well, that’s a difficult thing, especially if it means we might actually be exposed to life.

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write a poem about your first kiss or about the first kiss with someone who became a life-changing lover or partner.

  2. Journal or write a poem about something you “want with your whole life.” Go beyond the transitory wants and needs of life to a yearning or desire that has persisted throughout it all; or write from the stem sentence, ”All my life I have yearned for…”

  3. Journal or write a poem about an experience or event that cracked you open.

  4. Rumi makes a distinction between the language door and the love window. Use those descriptions as your writing prompt. In what way is love a window and not a door? In what way is language a door and not a window?

  5. Make your own distinction between doors and windows and what they might represent and journal or write a poem about that difference.

  6. Pick something from Nature describe what it yearns for.

  7. As usual, write about whatever else inspires you from the poem or from life.