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 10/5/23 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

Early memories, moments seared in the impressionable mind, set the stage in many ways for what is to come. Later, looking back, we can trace many of our beliefs, fears, and desires back to those moments in our childhood or adolescence. There is a reason that timeframe is called the “formative years.”  Poet and spiritual teacher Mark Nepo traces back his love of the “depths” to early memories on a sailboat in the poem, Stopped Again By The Sea. The main characters are the sailboat, the wind, and the sea, which come into play when they “cut the engine and hoist the sails.”  It is the moment of relinquishing the artificial drives we use to push through the world and begin to engage with the unseen forces of life and nature. For Nepo, it was the movement away from the home of his childhood and the drift toward the depths he writes about in his work and shares as a teacher. Depths that teach him about the nature of poetry, of love, and of peace. What do your depths teach you?

Stopping Again By The Sea

My early memories are of
motoring out to see where we
would cut the engine and hoist
the sails. Then, we wait for this
unseen force that some called wind
to carry us away from the streets.
Once in the open sea, it was hard
to think, hard to stay with any one
fear. We always left home to drift
near a deeper home. I guess I’ve
done this my whole life. For what
is poetry but the drift in search of
a deeper home? What is love but
the hoisting of all we hide until
it carries us away from all that is
hidden? What is peace but the
hammock of a wave that
no one can name?

—Mark Nepo
https://marknepo.com/

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem from the stem sentence, My early memories are of…

  2. Think of some activity or skill that you enjoy and trace it back to some early memory/memoiries that inspired the interest.

  3. Journal or write a poem about a time when you “cut the engines and hoisted the sails.” Consider times when you let yourself be guided by winds and tidal weather as well as your goals..

  4. Journal or write a poem about something that gets you out of your thinking mind.

  5. With what, where, or whom is your deeper home? Where do you natural drift when you stop pushing your life forward?

  6. Start writing with the prompt: I guess I’ve done this my whole life…

  7. Use Nepo’s ending sentence structure, what is poetry/love/peace but… and write you own conclusions to those sentences. Or insert your own nominalization (patience, freedom, friendship, creativity, etc.), What is but…

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