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 in the column on the right

  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

Rain

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

Please join Writing From The Inside Out by attending the read-around sessions on Thursday 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:

No read around for the next three weeks. Next read around will be March 30 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write poem about what it means to “stand in the light.”

  2. HIkmet uses the phrase, my hands hungry. What are hands hungry for? How might hands experience hunger? Use the phrase as your starting prompt.

  3. Use the prompt: My eyes can’t get enough of…

  4. Journal or write a poem aobut the ways n which trees are hopeful.

  5. Journal or write a poem about looking out a window on a world in which you could not participate.

  6. Journal or write a poem about the experience of imprisonment, literally or metaphysically.

  7. Hikmet refers to being in an infirmary; journal or write a poem about a sickness, or a stay in a hospital, that affected you or changed you.

  8. Write what ever comes to mind from the prompt, It’s this way…

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