If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

  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

Next Read-Around is 6/22/23 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

We do not know how our daily acts, or are very presence, ripples out into the world; how one note triggers another in a symphony only angels can hear. We have to fine-tune our instrument to feel the scales tilting or notice how one kindness in a coffee shop leads to another a few blocks down the road, or how one poem can light the heart of a stranger like a campfire in the dark. The next time you find yourself smiling at a little girl hop-scotching on the sidewalk, wonder from whom else she has swept the clouds away. Let that wandering troubadour of joy breeze through you and through you on to the next. Mark Nepo’s poem, Arpeggio, beautifully illustrates this breeze in action as part of a movement and, though we may only be a note of it and never know it, we are part of the orchestration.

Arpeggio

Missing you, I leave a note
at your door, never knowing that
the wind blows it on the porch of
the window next-door. And reading
my confession, the old woman relives
her own journey of becoming known.
It makes her fill the feeders and the
robbins, happy to be fed, sing a lighter
tune, which stops the serious girl in
the middle of her piano lesson.
For how can any practiced phrase
approach the suddenness of song?
At times, it goes like this. The
missing leads to dreaming, which
leads to feeding the small things
of the world. At times, we help
each other without ever knowing.

—Mark Nepo
https://marknepo.com
Excerpted from, The Half Life Of Angels

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem of your own about the invisible ripple of an act.

  2. What would you write in a note to someone or something you miss and leave on thier door? Use that as your prompt.

  3. Journal or write about a time when something unexpected caught your attention and changed your mind, your mood, or your emotion in the moment.

  4. Find a place to enjoy a bird or birds singing and let their song be your prompt.

  5. Journal or write a poem about an act or practice you (or you observe another) take seriously or do seriously. Describe the mindset, the mental-emotional focus, and physical expression of seriousness.

  6. What small things of the world do you feed out of missing or dreaming?

  7. As usual, write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.