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

The Widening Sky

I am so small walking on the beach
at night under the widening sky.
The wet sand quickens beneath my feet
and the waves thunder against the shore.

I am moving away from the boardwalk
with its colorful streamers of people
and the hotels with their blinking lights.
The wind sighs for hundreds of miles.

I am disappearing so far into the dark
I have vanished from site.
I am a tiny seashell
that has secretly drifted ashore

and carries the sound of the ocean
surging through its body.
I am so small now no one can see me.
How can I be filled with such a vast love?

—Edward Hirsch
https://www.edwardhirsch.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 23, 2023 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

If you have ever heard the wind laugh at it’s own folly, or sigh for hundreds of miles as it winds through woods or tiptoes through tables on the corner cafe, you know it is a seeker like you. To seek is to believe in a place of belonging despite the vastness of all that is. Everything has a universe relative to its size. Whenever you lookup to an endless sky of stars, knowing what we see is only the tiniest fraction of what is there, remember there is a microbial realm to which your tiny presence is an equivalent vastness.

Consider the hardy tardigrades, sometimes called water bears and moss piglets, eight legged animals only observable under a microscope and yet the world they inhabit is vast beyond comprehension. A scoop of earth the size of a sugar packet holds more species than are contained in all the zoos of the world. Whether you go big or small, you are always cosmic and microsopic, always both a bearer of worlds and a tiny speck of the imperceptible.

There is no species of wonder greater than awe and no occupancy too tiny or too vast the ocean of love cannot fill. Edward Hirsch’s poem suggests that ocean will roar even in the shell of your final rendering and lap you up even as you disappear into the microbial realm under The Widening Sky.

Prompt Menu

  1. Journal or write a poem about walking on a beach at night.

  2. Journal or write poem about the approach to and/or departure from a beach boardwalk, or a traveling circus, or any place of colorful lights and activity at night.

  3. Recall a time (or imagine one) when you took a road trip and did not know exactly where you might stay on a particular night. Describe the sitution and whether it was fun or frustrating or….?

  4. Journal or write a poem aobut the perspective from something much larger or much smaller than you.

  5. Journal or write about a time when you felt yourself or your world expanded or when you felt small and your world seemed condensed or, perhaps, intimate. When is it good to feel and be larger and when smaller?

  6. Journal or write a poem about disappearing.

  7. Consider time when you felt overwhelmed by the vastness of an emotion and journal or write a poem about that experience.

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