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

If I Am

If I am the Man in the Moon
you are the blue ball of my desire
the one to whom I always face
the one to whom I never turn my back

If I am marble
you are the artist shaping me
cutting away the excess
transforming me into my true form

If I am a river
you are the banks
that channel me to the sea
the rocks that ruffle and whiten me
the wide that calms me
and the narrow that rushes me

If I am the night sky
your are the stars lit within me
the constellations telling
my eternal story and
guiding me home

If I am anyone
you are the someone
that makes me someone
worthy of love

—Nick LeForce
https://www.nickleforce.com

Please join Writing From The Inside Out by attending the read-around sessions on Thursday afternoons. It’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional. If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read-Around is:
Thursday, February 16, 2023 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

I write one poem per day on average and typically over four hundred poems every year. For the past several years, I have culled “love” poems from my annual set and compiled an e-book for Valentine’s day. This year’s offering is called The Buoyancy of Love. Here is an excerpt from the introdction:

“Even the best of lives will be riddled with trouble. Those born with a silver spoon and those with the most cheerful and optimistic dispositions will still have to face insurmountable challenges and grapple with unanswerable questions. A life without dark nights of the soul is an impoverished life. Humanity is forged in fire and flood, in calamity and catastrophe. Suffering is part of the lot of every life. But that has never stopped humanity from rising to its greatness and showing its tenderness. There is nothing more powerful in sustaining us through life and “keeping us afloat” than love. Love is the core of every religion and spiritual tradition. The buoyancy of love not only keeps us afloat, it lightens us, makes us resilient, and inspires us to rise and shine.”

I have always had a stong sense of the beloved, of an intimate other, of “You” as a presence, that may appear in anyone, in anything, and at any time. If I Am is a love poem dedicated to that presence. It may seem fleeting at times, or stirred by phyuscial beauty in a person or a landscape, but also by moral beauty in the way people come to the aid of strangers inevery day life, and especially in tragedy as when the towers fall, when fires rage and floods rise, or when the quaking earth levels the land. You then feel, underneath our difficulties and differences, the hand of love at work in the world.

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write a love poem using the stucture, If I am….You are….

  2. Journal or write a poem about something or someone to whom you are so devoted you would not turn your back.

  3. Imagine love is an artist shaping (sculpting; or painting, drawing, designing) you or your life and journal or write a poem to describe the work in progress.

  4. Imagine your life is a river and journal or write poem about the way the river’s banks and bed have impacted the flow.

  5. What story does the constellation of love tell in you?

  6. Journal or write about someone that makes you feel worthy of love. What do they do and how do they do it to give you that feeling?

  7. As usual, write about anything else that inspires you from the poem or from life.