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 8/8/2024 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

A life without tears is a tyranny to the soul. Only cowards muster the kind of strength that keeps them untouchable. Those who keep to easy streets are easy targets for quiet trouble underneath the surface they are skimming.  And those who evade Cupid’s arrow will never take the feathered fall or know the feel of wing on currents soaring. Grieve the grieve-less who refuse to roost in the aching loss, who turn tears of joy away at the knock, or who keep the heart under lock. No! If ever I should be one of those, make me a coffin and lay me down in my repose.

But yet to be alive – to feel the hesitancy at the fire; the heartbreak of desire, to love what cannot last wanting it to last forever. To be puddled at a baby’s laugh, a vase of flowers, a broken sack, refugees in a winter camp, and how one hand lifts another.

And then, as Edward Field describes in the The Journey, there are those rare and precious moments when, without cause or reason, some thing inexplicably cracks the tear ducts open. It is raw and tender and bittersweet: a joyful sorrow, a deep surrender. On the surface, it may seem subtle. Underneath, we are tenderized. We are much less likely to curse the steps we take when walking on uneven ground. And those that look with honest eyes can see, as Field points out, a new radiance emanating from inside.

The Journey

When he got up that morning, everything was different:
He enjoyed the bright spring day
But he did not realize it exactly, he just enjoyed it.

And walking down the street to the railroad station
Past magnolia trees with dying flowers like old socks
It was a long time since he had breathed so simply.

Tears filled his eyes, and it felt good
But he held them back
Because men didn’t walk around crying in that town.

Waiting on the platform at the station
The fear came over him of something terrible about to happen:
The train was late and he recited the alphabet to keep hold.

And in its time it came screeching in
And as it went on making usual stops,
People coming and going, telephone poles passing,

He hit his head behind a newspaper
No longer able to hold back the sobs, and willed his eyes
To follow the rational weaving of the seat fabric.

He didn’t do anything violent as he had imagined.
He cried for a long time, but when he finally quieted down
A place in him that had been closed like a fist was open.

And at the end of the ride, he stepped up and got off the train:
And through the streets and in all the places he lived in later on
He walked, himself at last, a man among men,
With such radiance that everyone looked up and wondered.

—Edward Field
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Field_(poet)

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem describing a day you simply enjoyed (or imagine such a day) —not out of a state of ecstasy or bliss and not because anything special happened and for no particular cause por reason. You just simply enjoyed the day.

  2. Describe a time when you woke up in the morning and everything was different, ideally subtly so.

  3. Journal or write a poem about the sights and sounds around you as you do some everyday routine thing (driving to work, walking the dog, ordering coffee at a coffee shop, eating dinner with family or friends, etc.). Describe the background things you may not normally notice.

  4. Journal or write a poem about a moment when you felt tears welling up for no apparent reason; or about a time when you got teary and felt you had to hold it back. Or write about an extended time when you were emotionally sensitive but still had to navigate the everyday.

  5. Describe the dread that something bad might happen without any sense of why or what it might be. The narrator recites the alphabet to ward off the feeling. What do you do ward off the dread?

  6. Consider what keeps you from crying, especially in front of others. Journal or write a poem about what you fear will happen if you do so?

  7. Use the prompt: On the day I walked through the streets and in all the places I lived as myself, I…

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