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 11/9/23 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

The poem, Promises. by Shereen Asha Murugaya  pits the phrase I meet the world against what the world promises. That gap challenges us to ask: What does it all mean? It’s the kind of question that makes your heart rise or fall. Living whole heartedly in the relentless uncertainty of life is about as naked as we can get. We do not know what grief the day may bring to us or what glory it may take from us. We want some thing we can rely on — some enduring promise we can count on from life and some promise we can commit to in life.  We might make a pact with the sun to keep rising and we shall rise too despite what the unscripted day may foist upon us. With that level of vulnerability, there is no heartache we cannot confess and we see the preciousness of little things, like putting a smile on a stranger’s face or the marveling at a child’s well-worn shoe. That’s how we open our own book of revelation. It is everywhere and then, like the poet of promises, we can meet the world, pick the smallest thing (no matter what life delivers), and wring joy out of it.

Promises

I meet the world,
eyes like puffer fish.
Heart, cat on a leash,
yellow-tipped hope of a goldfinch.

This is the only promise the world makes:
sun, keep rising for me,
and I will keep rising for you.

Remind me it is
the blue hood of his graduation robe,
the purple ribbon streaming from her bike,
pink balloons tied to a post box.

Remind me I can
pick the smallest thing
and wring joy from it.

—Shereen Asha Murugaya
Chacago artist and contributor to Labyrinth,
a book of poetry publshed by LuckyJefferson.com

Prompt Ideas

  1. How do you meet the world? Journal or write a poem on that topic. What does it take for you to meet the world in the way that you do?

  2. What does it mean to have eyes like a pufferfish? Journal or write a poem about a time when you reacted to the world with eyes like a puffer fish.

  3. In what way or at what times is your heart a “cat on a leash?”

  4. Use the phrase “yellow-tipped hope” and journal or write a poem from that image. I am curious, in the poem, if it is the heart/cat or the goldfinch or both with the yellow tipped hope. Note: The goldfinch actually molts twice a year replacing drab gray colored feathers of the winter with bright yellow feathers in the summer and vice versa.

  5. Journal or write a poem from the stem sentence: The only promise the world makes…

  6. What would you like to be reminded of each day to keep your own “yellow-tipped hope” alive?

  7. Make a list poem of small things in life and the joy you wring from them.

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