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

Weathering

Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face 
catches the wind off the snow line and flushes 
with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well: 
that was a metropolitan vanity, 
wanting to look young forever, to pass.

I was never a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, 
nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy 
men who need to be seen with passable women. 
But now that I am in love with the place 
which doesn’t care how I look, or even if I’m happy,

happy is how I look, and that’s all. 
My hair will turn gray in any case, 
my nails chip and flake, my waist thicken, 
and the years work all their usual changes. 
If my face is to be weather-beaten as well 

that’s a little enough lost, a fair bargain 
for a year among lakes and fells, when simply 
to took out of my window at the high pass 
makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what 
my soul may wear over its new complexion.

Fleur Adcock
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/fleur-adcock

Next Read Around is March 4, 2022

My Thoughts

When I was young, I loved to walk the ocean beaches south of San Francisco and pick up bits of debris weathered by the sea. I preferred small stones, broken shells, pieces of glass, and bits of drift wood over the gaping shells of whole mussels, freshly vacant of occupancy, or the fanned ridges of unblemished scallops. The perfection did not capture my storied heart in the same way as did the fragmented bits of refuse that often littered a space in kaleidoscopic patterns.

I loved the look and feel of edges worn down, of surfaces smoothed and how the polished sheen of lines and colors brightened in the sun. I loved the mish-mash, the way seemingly unrelated things fell into a harmony, no matter how broken, damaged, or misshapen. I think this is the way Fleur Adcock talks about what the soul wears over our weathered bodies and torn and tattered lives. But we can only see it once we let go of the who-is-the-fairest mirror and stop dreaming of a skinny dip in the fountain of youth. We might actually come to love the place that doesn’t care how we look; that doesn’t require us to be happy; that takes us as we are, side-by-side, along with other remnants in the shifting kaliedoscope of tide and time. And in that view, happy is how your soul coat looks, even if you do not know it.

Prompt Menu

1. Adcock is brutally honest about herself, her aging body, her physical appeal but in  a matter-of-fact manner, without remorse or pity. Journal or write a brutally honest assessment of yourself in a similar way.

2. What is your “metropolitan vanity?” What do you do to fit into the citied and civilized world? 

3. To what degree do you grapple (or have you grappled ) with the societal standards of beauty or attractiveness.In what way have you striven to be more or less “passable” by those standards?

4. Journal or write about a place that you can or might go that does not care how you look or whether or not you are happy. What does, or might, that free up in you? How does or might that limit you?

5. Journal or write about the changes the years have worked on you, physically, mentally, and otherwise.

6. Adcock describes the indifference to mirrors as a “fair bargain” for the weather-beating of life on her body. What have you lost in aging? What have you gained that might serve as a fair bargain for the losses? 

7. Adcock goes beyond self acceptance of her physical self when she describes indifference to what her soul may wear over her aging complexion. What if you no longer tried to wear a pretty covering over your persona? What might be at risk if you did so?

8. Journal or write a poem from the prompt, “Happy is how I look when…

9. Journal or write aobut anything else that might inspire you from the poem or life.