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:

NO READ-AROUND THIS WEEK!
Next Read-Around is 9/19/2024 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

Why is the tradition spring cleaning? Shouldn’t we take our cue from the fall? Nature dictates that it’s better to face the winter free of unessential burdens. Trees drop their leaves, conserve their energy in trunk and branch and roots deep in the merciful earth. They know it is better to willingly let go rather than fight against the stripping. They ready themselves to let winds, rain, snow, and storms pass through, standing still and quiet in deep meditation and silent prayer. Autumn offers us a chance to clear the clutter, focus on what is essential, and ready ourselves for the coming of winter. Our wam-blooded bodies need the protection of second skins and walled enclaves. We need access to fire, food, family, and friendship. We may not go bare like trees, but we can let the leaves of unneeded things fall away: clearing our gutters and sweeping out garages, and setting our tables with candles and warm bowls of soup. And then we get down to what is essential when we gather together on darkening evenings to share the love that binds us.

When Autumn Came

This is the way that autumn came to trees:
it stripped them down to the skin,
left their ebony bodies naked.
It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,
scattered them over the ground.
Anyone could trample them out of shape
undisturbed by a single moan of protest.

The birds that herald dreams
were exiled from their song,
each voice torn from its throat.
They dropped into the dust,
even before the hunter strung his bow.

Oh, God of May, have mercy.
Bless these withered bodies
with the passion of your resurrection;
make their dead veins flow with blood again.

Give some tree the gift of green again.
Let one bird sing.

—Faiz Ahmad Faiz
Translated by Naomi Lazard
https://allpoetry.com/Faiz-Ahmed-Faiz

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about the way autumn comes to some aspect of life (a garden, a park,a particular plant, a pet, a window etc.) or to your life (your garage, your relationships, your routines, etc.)

  2. Journal or write a poem about your relationship to the autumn. How does autumn come to you? How do you recognize and, greet it? Do you welcome it or fend it off, etc.

  3. Journal or write a poem about the trampling on something you or someone have put energy into creating.

  4. What dreams in the world or your life have been exiled? Journal or write a poem about being exiled from your own voice and how you have or might reclaim it.

  5. What has withered in your body, or your life, or the body of your life? What passion would you like resurrected?

  6. Journal or write a poem about the care of declining things.

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