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

Praising Spring

The day is taken by each thing and grows complete.
I go out and come in and go out again,
confused by a beauty that knows nothing of delay,
rushing like fire. All things move faster
than time and make a stillness thereby. My mind
leans back and smiles, having nothing to say.
Even at night I go out with a light and look
at the growing. I kneel and look at one thing
at a time. A white spider on a peony bud.
I have nothing to give, and make a poor servant,
but I can praise the spring. Praise this wildness
that does not hear the hour. The doe that does not
stop at dark but continues to grow all night long.
The beauty in every degree of flourishing. Violets
lift to the rain in the Brooke gets louder than ever.
The old German farmer is asleep and the flowers go on opening. There are stars. Mint grows high. Leaves
bend in the sunlight as the rain continues to fall.

Linda Gregg
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/linda-gregg

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Next Read Around is June 3, 2022at 4:00 PM (PST)

My Thoughts

Spring is now maturing into summer, driven towards its own flourishing. No other season has as near the abundance of poetic praise as spring. And rightly so, since it is the time when we see a billion re-enactments of the perennial Journey of Growth through hardship to flourishing. Linda Gregg’s poem, Praising Spring, personifies that journey. Her use of the first person pronoun guides us to experience the ecstatic rapture at flourishing despite all the odds. We learn that the whole journey lives inside every step from growth to flourishing with all the striving and struggle to get there.  We learn to go out looking for growth. We learn to witness it with an immensity of gratitude.  And even though we have nothing to give, we can praise what we witness, praise the wildness, praise the beauty in every degree of flourishing. Then, something magical happens: we detach from all things that move faster than time and feel the most refreshing stillness. We kneel down and look at one thing at a time as if it were an answered prayer.

Prompt Menu

1. Use Greg‘s first line phrase, “The day is taken by…” as your prompt.

2. Imagine what it might be like to have all things move faster than time and describe that experience. How might having things speed by actually lead to a sense of stillness?

3. Journal or write a poem about what you notice in the world when you “go out looking for growth?”

4. Journal or write a poem starting with the prompt, My mind leans back and smiles at…

5. If you think of kneeling down as a spiritual act, what does it mean to kneel down and look at one thing at a time? Journal or write a poem about what that experience might be like.

6. Compose your praise for something in the natural world; for the the wildness of something in life or for the beauty of some particular degree of flourishing. Or, consider someone in your life that you admire or toward whom you feel grateful. Write a letter of appreciation and praise for that person.

7. Write a poem or journal about something in your life that goes on growing regardless of your caretaking or neglect. What praiseworthy growing goes on in your life without you noticing? What is flourishing, or is open to flurishing, in life or in you now?

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