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 1/9/25 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 heart breaking rut of our ordinary mundane lives whittling away days, weeks, months, years of our lives without noticing the impossible odds that we are here at all.

I wrote the poem, Impossible Beauty, on the third day of 2025. I often start my days with a prompt to write at the end of the day. In this case, I gave myself the prompt: : “today was a day of impossible beauty…” I completed the poem that evening and then edited it slightly by changing it to present tense the next day becuse it speaks to those moments when a presence breaks through the pall of the ordinary and we glimpse life through the eyes of an affectionate witness, of one who knows that we are an unknown equation on the edge of potentiality and that we may, at any moment, break ground on a new life. And what better time to step into that expansive presence than the the first days of the last year of the first quarter of the 21st century!

—Nick LeForce
www.nickleforce.com

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 gravesite 
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 using with the stem sentence, Today is a day of….If helpful, repeat the stem sentence with new responses.

  2. What does the phrase impossible beauty bring to mind for you? Write you own version of impossible beauty.

  3. How would youclassify the taxonomy of beauty? Describe the the “kinds” of beauty in the world: the beauty of nature, of art, of performance…

  4. Journal or write a poem about beauty in unexpected places (like a cemetary or rusted farm equiment in an open field)

  5. Recall an experience of feeling life slipping away. What triggered it? What did it prompt in you and where did you go with it?

  6. Write an ode to routines.

  7. Journal or write a poem about an angel looking over you. How does the angel see you? What might the angel say about you, your life, your idiosyncracies, your folly, your desperation, or your brilliance?

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