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 12/21/23 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

Angels are everywhere this time of year. You see them perched in trees and standing on shelves like silent sentries that bring good cheer. You see them in holiday movies, coming as helpers and messengers, restoring the world and righting the lives of those who have lost their way.  We think of them as service staff for humans. Rarely do we think of how angels live their own lives, or how far they have fallen from their heyday for the age of reason stripped them of their wings. To us in the modern world, angels are mostly symbolic. Cseslaw Milosz speaks directly to Angels about their plight in his poem, on angels. Expressing his sympathy in the opening line: All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, Even existence. 

On Angels

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence. Yet I believe you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a have a fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trust worthy seems.

Short is your stay here:
now and then add a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at the close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you,
but to me this does not sound convincing
for humans invented themselves as well.

 The voice – no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless, and winged (after all why not?)
girdled with lightning.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep,
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an earthly tongue:
day draws near
another one
do what you can.

—Cselaw Milosz

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/czeslaw-milosz

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem in praise of beauty througout the seasons.

  2. Journal or write a poem that captures beauty in some unexpected perception, like litter on the ground or a yellow bag carried on wind against the gray sky as Bauer does in your own poem.

  3. Write a love poem “To The Ordinary And The Extra.”

  4. In what way is attention “a kind of praise?”

  5. Journalor write a poem about worship. What does worship mean to you.How do you experience it or practice it?

  6. What in your life have you “learned to love?” Perhaps something that grew to love or that re-visited so often you came to love it. You can make it a list poem and use the prompt: In my life, I learned to love…

  7. What do you do to find pleasure or beauty when you have “an eye is immersed in gray?”

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