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 9/7/23 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 below

  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

I enjoy watching birds land: the angling of wingsto break speed, the tilting of feet to catch ground or alight on a thin branch. Heather Swann catches this moment in her poem, On lightness. She describes how the branch gives to accept the weight and thrust of the landing bird. Sometimes the size of the bird seems almost impossibly large for the branch that supports it. Swann illustrates this lightness in the wren resting on the branch as if it is filled with the same air that it floats through when flying. It is this turn in the poem, this way of perceiving, that yields the lesson on lightness whenbeing a burden. I, like so many others, was raised with a dread of being a burden. The natural consequence is a reluctance to ask for help and avoidance of putting any weight on other peoples lives. A line from my own poem, Awakening, reads: “No matter how carefully we tread, we will leave dirty footprints in the lives of others.” To live in relationship with others means we will burden them at times and they burden to us at times. The question Swann suggests is: How can we handle it lightly when it occurs?

On Lightness

Outside my window,
a wren, alights
on a fiddlehead fern,
and the plant is forced
to bend its green spine.
As he rest there,
the air never leaves
the bird’s body –
the way he floats
through trees. And then
he takes to the sky again,
and the fern sways
upright, opening its arms,
once again,
to the sun.
If only it could always
be like this:
the burden of one
never breaking another.

—Heather Swann
https://www.heatherswan.net/home-1

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem describing some aspect of a bird’s  lift off, flight, landing, or resting, What could it teach you about your interaction with the world?

  2. What animals can you spot from your window? Journal and write a poem about the life forms you see through your window and what they might teach you by their bearing and action.

  3. Journal or write a poem about your relationship to being a burden and how it plays out in your life. Or write about a specific time when you felt you were a burden to someone. How did you deal with it and what happened as a result?

  4. Journal or write a poem about accepting a burden lightly. Give instructions to yourself or to others on how to do so.

  5. Burden, by definition, lends itself to “heaviness.” How might you reframe the idea of a burden so that it’s not heavy.

  6. What are you willing to bend in your life to support others when they need a soft landing?

  7. Pick someone in your inner circle and write about what degree of lightness or heaviness your presence in their life is to them generally (by your estimation). If you want to take it further, have a conversation with the person and find out from them.

  8. Conversely, write about the degree of lightness or heaviness a partiular person has to you.

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