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 5/30/2024 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

I post this prompt menu on my last night in Paris: the city of lights; the city of love; the city of passion and pickpockets; the city of romance and the far reach of the heart. It is one of the most visited cities in the world and the wonder and wear of it shows on the faces of travelers. It is a city where people come to find their hearts or lose their hearts. So, it seemed apt to share my poem, Sacred Relics, inspired by the idea that the longest journey we will take in our life is the journey from the head to the heart. It is a journey with starts and stops and wrong turns and sudden flashes of brilliance. Every time I think I might have finally found a reliable guide in the compass of my heart, a new turmoil thrusts me back on to turbulent seas. This is the heart’s way of reminding us that we are more than our strategic mind; that we have embodied voices inside that speak in the language of physical sensation and feelings. Like the sea, this surface turbulence floats on a deeper calm. If we can learn to anchor ourselves in that calm, we can make friends of our turbulence in a way that truly does serve as a compass to navigate our lives soulfully.

Sacred Relics

I do not know when I lost my footing on the earth
or when I moved upstairs from the heart
to the lofty places where ideas dance.
I do not know how many steps I must take
to make the pilgrimage back to the holy land.

 But I do know the longing for something that cannot be named,
the missing of something unknown
as if the day calls me; calls me out to play

because I was once eager to go outside.
I once knocked on the doors of friends uninvited.
I once moved in my body as if I belonged there.

But here I am now in the middle of my life
with duties to be done and chores to be completed,

 while the pilgrim comes, uninvited,
knocking at the door of my heart
bringing sacred relics of the life I have not yet lived—
ready to take me, even as I am, if I am willing
to find my way down the stairs
and open myself to life once again

© Nick LeForce 2003-2024

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about “losing your footing the earth.”

  2. Free write whatever follows from the prompt, In the lofty places where ideas dance, I…

  3. Journal or write what serves for you as holy ground.

  4. What simple acts did you once do (like knocking on the doors of friends uninvited in the poem) that you no longer do. Why did you abandon them? What have you lost in the forfeit and what might you gain by re-enacting some?

  5. Journal or write a poem about how you live differently in your body now than you did before.

  6. Journal or write a poem about the experience of someone or something that knocked on the door of your heart.

  7. Free write from the prompt, If I really open myself to life once again, I…

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