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 Numinosity of Being

Lovers can’t make love happen 
but unless they will it, 
it won’t.

The poet can’t make the poem happen 
but unless she leans into it every day, 
it won’t.

A mystery dwells in the heart of living: 
We are protected against nothing 
yet sustained in everything.

Watch a child crouch over 
a broken twig floating in the gutter 
or chase a butterfly in circles 
before collapsing in a heap 
of tangled laughter.

Look for the ecstatic in the unremarkable 
and soon enough you’ll hear 
a holiness in the morning wind 
and taste the virtue in a glass of water 
drawn from the kitchen tap.

Praise be… standing at the sink
and drinking deeply of the ordinary.

—By Dennis Hock 
From Bringing Birds Through Stone. If you would like a copy of this book, contact Dennis Hock: dhock24@gmail.com.

Next Read Around is January 21, 2022 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

Sacramento poet Dennis Hock’s magnificent book, Bringing Birds Through Stone, expresses themes near and dear to my heart. The radiance of the ordinary is one theme I often return to in my own writing. Dennis captures this theme beautifully in the poem, The Numinosity of Being. I suspect the only difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is in our relationship to life and the heart we bring to the moment. In order for anything to be “ordinary” we must peel ourselves off the world, dull our senses, entrench ourselves in an attitude of indifference. Perhaps distancing ourselves from life is a coping mechanism against the onslaught of input, a metering of the mass of sensation we must process and endure in everyday life.

The ordinary may actually offer us a kind of break from the radiance of things. In our modern world, it seems we have taken this break to an extreme. Most of us have mastered the art of distracted living, residing somewhere outside of our bodies in an elsewhere that cannot be found on a map. We no longer listen to the pulse of life around us and we fail to feel the ecstatic in the unremarkable. And since we have little practice at it, it is exhausting to bring our full presence to our moments. To do so, however, sanctifies our action, honors the object of our attention as a partner in the dance. As Hock says: we can’t make love happen, but unless we will it, it won’t. When what we bring to life is mirrored back to us, we have engaged the Numinosity of Being.

Prompt Menu

1. Journal or write a poem about a time when your will and the world coincided; when you were rowing with the current.

2. Journal or write a poem about “leaning in” to life or to a particualr action (like writing). Consider the dance between “leaning in” and “pulling back” and when to do which.

3. Take the line “a mystery dwells at the heart of living,” and riff on what that mystery (or group of mysteries) might be.

4. Journal or write a poem about a child’s (or about a childhood memory of your own) fascination with the world.

5. Journal or write a poem about someone who entered your life by mistake or by happenstance.

6. What is the sound of holiness? How might you hear it in the wind? What is the taste of virtue? Journal or write a poem that uses synesthesia.

7. Journal or Write an ode to everyday life (or anything you choose) using the stem, “Praise be…

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