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:

Next Read-Around is 8/10/23 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  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

My Thoughts

“Each day I long so much to see the true teacher.” What an opening line for Francisco Albánez’ poem, The One Who Is At Home. It touches that deep seated sense of insufficiency at the core of being human in the increasing complexity of today’s world. There are so many voices hooking us on what we are lacking, real or imagined,  pulling us off center, and promising to teach the secret to fame, wealth, beauty, and joy. If only we could find the true teacher; the one who can teach us to be at home in our own broken, battered, and beautiful lives. And right there, in the title, Albánez gives the answer: the true teacher is the one who is at home. The poem follows the logic of Chuang Tzu’s famous butterfly dream: am I a man dreaming I am a butterlfy or a butterfly dreaming I am a man. Albánez brings the magic of that mystical dissociation by referring to the one who is at home. What if there is one inside of you that is already totally at home in your life? What if you let that one be your true teacher. Maybe all you need to do is observe and listen to distill your own secrets of how you live and love freely.

The One Who Is At Home

Each day I long so much to see
The true teacher. And each time
At desk when I open the cabin
Door and empty the tea pot,
I think I know where he is:
West of us, in the forest.

Or perhaps I am the one
Who is out in the night,
The forest sand wet under
My feet, moonlight, shining
On the sides of the birch trees,
The sea far off gleaming.

And he is the one who is
At home. He sits in my chair
Calmly; he reads and prays
All night. He loves to feel
His own body around him;
He does not leave his house.

Francisco Albánez
https://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2015/08/francisco-albanez-one-who-is-at-home.html
Translatedby Robert Bly

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about the “true teacher.” You can use the prompt, The True teacher is the one who…

  2. Albánez locates the true teacher west, in the forest. What environment or location would you imagine ideal for the true teacher? (the wise one in a cave, desert, jungle, junkyard; in a tree, a temple, a gas station, etc.) 

  3. Where do you imagine yourself to be when you daydream you are elsewhere? Describe it in detail.

  4. What do you see when you “see yourself at home”? Go with whatever image comes to mind.

  5. What does it mean to you to be at home? Notice what happens when you describe this using first person (when I am at home) versus third person (when he/she/they is/are at home, —or for more distance, the one who is at home) versus using second person, when you are at home…) 

  6. Albánez’ one who is at home reads and prays but does not leave the house. Journal or write your poem about what the one who is at home does and does not do.

  7. Journal or write a poem about what makes you feel at home in your life or in yourself.  What people, things, activities, and places eellike home? In what particular moments and what particular ways? 

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