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 2/1/2025 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

Among the earliest lessons we learn in life are the rules of polite society, saying “please” and “thank you.” Although we may learn them as conventions, and say them simply to be polite, these tiny gestures are intended to keep a sense of balance between people and acknowledge our interdependence. That simple word please, attached to a request, acknowledges the other’s volition. Historically, it is likely shorthand for the phrase, if you please: “Can you get me a glass of water, (if you) please.” But it is also used to soften a demand: Please turn down the radio. Of course, voice and delivery can twist the word “please” from a genuine request to an exasperated plea or a sarcastic demand. But, at least for me, I never thought of the word please as a prayer until reading Ellery Akers poem, The Word That Is A Prayer. Perhaps we all have blurted it out as a prayer when at the end of our rope, the extremities of our despair, or the desperation of our desire. Or, as Akers points out, when we recognize that we are anchored in and dependent on forces beyond ourselves.

The Word That Is A Prayer

One thing you know, when you say it:
all over the earth people are saying it with you;
a child blurting it out as the seizures take her,
a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.
What if you take a cab through the tenderloin:
at a street light, a man in a wool cap,
yarn unraveling across his face, knocks at the window;
he says, Please.
By the time you hear what he’s saying,
the light changes, the cab pulls away,
and you don’t go back, though you know
someone just prayed to you the way you pray.
Please: a word so short
it could get lost in the air
as it floats up to God, like the feather it is,
knocking and knocking, and finally
falling back to earth as rain,
as pellets of ice, soaking a black branch,
collecting in drains, leaching into the ground,
and you walk in that weather every day.

Ellery Akers
https://www.elleryakers.com

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about the rules of polite society and how they manifest for you or in your family.

  2. Journal or write a poem about the many different meanings of, or ways you can say, the word “please.”

  3. Think of the varous things you might say and do “out of politeness” or write about the (real or imagined) results of an act of politness. You can use the prompt, Out of politeness…

  4. Consider any other typical words used in polite society (such as Thank you, Excuse me, I’m sorry…etc.) and journal or write a poem about the word/phrase.

  5. Consider a time when someone in need made a plea directly to you and Journal or write a poem about that experience.

  6. Journal or write poem about what makes the word please into a prayer.

  7. Consider a time when you were in need and used please as a prayer and Journal or write a poem about that experience. .

  8. Write a poem about the weather in your life. How has the weather in your life changed over time. What weather do youforecast in your future?

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