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 12/5/24 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

Here we are (already?!) in the first days of the last year of the first quarter of the 21st century! Of course, this is only by convention and by our naming it. Otherwise each day is its own, no matter what we call it or how we load it with meaning. 

Since meaning is the way we make sense of our lives, we can make the most of it. When a turn of the calendar and the changing of a day is collectively and dramatically riddled with endings and beginnings, why not make these first days of the last year of the first quarter of the 21st century into a catalytic converter that transforms the heart’s desire into action.

Ahh…but we are creatures of routine, of body locks and mind sets, that steer us reliably down the old familiar path. We fall into the rut and lose sight impossible beauty The poem, Impossible Beauty, expresses those moments when a presence breaks through the pall of the ordinary, and I glimpse life through the eyes of an affectionate witness, one who see the impossible beauty of being here at all.

Impossible Beauty 

Today is a day of
impossible beauty;
the kind of beauty you find
in the weatherworn
face of an angel
on a cemetery statue:

nameless, featureless,
head tilted slightly down
hovering over the gravestone
of the forgotten.

And it breaks your heart
because you have felt life
slipping through your fingers
and you have secretly
prayed that an angel
is looking over you.

You walk by the statue 100
times a day in your routines
without noticing and then
a day like today comes and
everything falls in place.

On one level, it’s the heart
breaking drab of everyday life:
waking up, making coffee,
walking to your workspace.

On another level, you are
the weatherworn angel
looking over your life
with surprising affection

who sees you as an architect
of indispensable attributes,
an artist of nuance in a haphazard life,
and a poet of impossible beauty:

the kind of beauty rendered
in farm equipment rusting
into the earth of an open field
with the urgency of new life
about to break ground.

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about a broken heart. Or make it a list poem of the many ways a heart can be broken.

  2. For what are you willing to risk breaking your heart? Write about a time when you knew something would break your heart (or someone else’s) and you did it anyway.

  3. Journal or write a poem about the experience of coming upon or discovering a dead animal.

  4. Pick an animal you commonly see in your area and journal or write a poem about it. Consider what it would be like if they suddnely died off. What would we lose? (e.g.: the squirrel’s mental map of buried nuts) What would you miss? (e.g.: the fluff and shake of the squirrel’s tail, the darting chase and dash up the tree of one squirrel after another).

  5. Journal or write a poem that cries out the long, sweet savoring of your life. You can use the propmpt, In the long, sweet savoring of my life…

  6. Consider a place, a person, or a thing you fear will soon be gone and journal or write a poem about a last visit.

  7. What is the differene between a broken heart and a heart broken open?

  8. Are you willing to have your heart broken open and never closed again? What could that mean? How would you live differently? Are you willing to have your heart broken open to the rest of the world? What could that mean and how would you live differently?

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