Writing From the Inside Out 2022 Week 34 Prompts
based on Cynthia White’s Quail Hollow
Read the poem
Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you
Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…
Use the selection of prompts below the poem
Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…
Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes
Quail Hollow
Think of the path as calligraphy –
narrow where it borders
the farm house and horse pens.
Think, how beyond the open gate,
the stroke fattens, traveling
upward into the dark
scrawl of live oak and bay.
See how the light
is a tender wash. Under
your feet, sand that once
cradled a sea. Blue-bellies skitter,
scritching like tiny scribes
among the leaves. Think
how little ink is required to write
three million years.
After the climb, the view,
the final loop. You pass the houses
of sleeping wood rats, the pond,
glassine slashed with cattails.
Now, before getting into your car,
consider with what ease
the rise and fall of robin song
can erase a certain ache,
the day‘s gathering premonitions.
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 August 26, 2022 at 4:00 PM (PST)
My Thoughts
On my many trips to China, I often took delight in watching street calligraphers dip their large stick brushes into a bucket of water and scribe poems and quotes on the concrete, the characters at the top fading before the final stroke. It seemed to me a beautiful practice of equanimity, of self-expression released into the world without need for permanence. Walking in nature, I often see cryptic hieroglyphics in the configuration of leaves, coded messages in striated rock, and hear whispers in wind. It seems as if the world really is talking to me and all I need to do is decode the cypher to learn the secrets of life.
Cynthia White‘s poem, Quail Hollow, inspired by the landscape of the Quail Hollow Ranch Park in Santa Cruz, merged these memories for me by describing the path itself as calligraphy, both from the trail’s shape, from the thicket of live oak rising up, and then on to the scratch of bird feet on the sand. It is as if she is privy to the poetry of life at work in the world, always around us and available for those inclined to catch it. The sometimes subtle, sometimes insistent messages from the world wash away in the changing light or get carried away by water and wind or consumed in the slow burn of the sun or the quick of terrestrial fire.
We, too, are among the ever-changing. Nature’s poetry, spanning lifetimes, continually appearing and disappearing, naturally puts our life in perspective, easily erases the ache of our day—which we would likley forget in the tide of time anyway—while offering premonitions from a gathering of three million years of blessings.
By Cynthia White on page 120 of how to love the world
https://www.narrativemagazine.com/authors/cynthia-white
https://www.massreview.org/node/8971
Prompt Menu
In what font and form does the path you walk write? Does it change with changing contexts: family, friends, work, play, hobbies, etc?
Go to a park and journal or write a poem describing the sequence of appearances that strike your senses as you walk.
Use White’s opening phrase as your prompt changing up the metaphor from calligraphy to something else of your choosing: Think of the path as…
Use White’s opening phrase as your prompt applying it to something other than a path: Think of (fill in the blank) as:
White chooses the word “scritching,” which can mean a shrill sound and can describe that act of affectionately scratching the back, neck, or between the ears of a pet or a person. She cleverly connects it to writing as well. Use the word as your prompt and journal or write whatever comes to mind from there.
Use the word “ache” as your prompt. What are you aching for or aching over? What erases your aches?
Write a list of a day’s ”gathering premonitions.” You can use a typical day or a ay of the week (Wednesday’s premonitions or Saturday’s premonitions) or choose a special day and describe what the day and describe what you anticipate on such a day.
As usual, write about whatever else inspires you from the poem or from life.