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

At The Window

I was at the window
when a fly near the latch 
was on its back spinning—
legs furious, going nowhere. 

I thought to swat it
but some thing in its struggle 
was too much my own. 

It kept spinning and began to tire. 
Without moving closer, I exhaled 
steadily, my breath a sudden wind, 
and the fly found its legs, 
rubbed its face 
and flew away. 

I continue to stare at the latch 
hoping that someday, the breath 
of something incomprehensible 
would right me and 
enable me to fly.

—Mark Nepo
https://marknepo.com

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Next Read Around is January 28, 2022 at 4:00 PM
PST

My Thoughts

We have all dealt with tiny home invaders, usually as nuisances we want to remove from our environment and sometimes as saviors returning them to their‘s. Flies are among the most common insect visitors and we generally have little tolerance for them. Consider all the weapons we have against them: fly swatter, fly paper, fly gun, fly bottles, fly trap, fly zapper, etc.. We’re not like the aboriginals in the Australian outback who stand in a swarm of flies and let them feast on their sweat and clean their nostrils (or so I have heard).

To most of us in the “developed” countries, insects are either annoying or dangerous. It is no surprise then that Mark Nepo’s first inclination when he sees a fly in his house is to swat it. In the poem, At The Window, he captures a transformative moment that can only occur once we get beyond our initial impulse and really look at things.  Any experience that reconnects us to life or helps us to see ourselves in the world kindles the heart. The poem shows that even the smallest moment can be like the breath of something incomprehensible, flipping us out of intolerance and suffering which can then right us in relationship to life. 


Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write poem about an experience with an insect, especially when one was in your house.

  2. Journal or write a poem about a tine when you witnessed someone or thing( or when you were) down, spinning, legs furious and going nowhere.

  3. Use Nepo’s opening line as prompt, “I was at the window (when)…” and write whatever comes to mind from there.

  4. What are the various ways you have responded to suffering in other lving things .Journal or write a poem about the impact on you and what action, if any, you took.

  5. Journal or write a poem about some thing about which you were both curious and afraid at the same time.

  6. Find a window latch in your house or in the world and journal or write apome about it.

  7. Journal or write a poem from the phrase ”the breath of something incomprehensible.”

  8. What in your life might need “righting” and what might right it? What do you believe would enable you to fly metaphorically?

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