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 2/13/25 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

Valentine’s day is coming this Friday. Whether or not love is in the air for you, it is a day to celebrate love. Unfortunately, we have mostly narrowed love down in our modern world to equal romantic love with that one special person who should then bear the burden of all of our needs and desires. I remember writing and receiving many Valentine’s Day cards in elementary school.  I think it was the 4th grade when I was instruced that there could only be one Valentine. Recently, I heard an interview with Rhaina Cohen, author of The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center. Cohen fashioned a very deep platonic love with a friend and then found others in her social circle confused, many believing she and her friend must be lesbians or in open relationships, because both of them were otherwise happily married. Her book describes these soulmate friendships between people with all the classical elements of romatinc love but without sexual desire. What if you opened up this Valentine’s Day to write about love in any of its myriad forms? Partners, Friends, Family or, about the feeling of love itself, as I do in my poem, Love.

Love

It is light and airy. It could be
something with wings. It's a promise,
but it cannot be pinned down.

It is a breed of desire I cannot name,
but when it grips me, I feel like a lullaby.

It is Dylan's song and I suspect,
after all the answers blow through me,
a dragonfly will land on my finger.

I do not want to get my hopes up,
but my pupils are dilated,
as if looking at the dreaming face
of the longed-for-lover

and I bathe in the warmth
of that sun until my wings
flutter open on their own.

—Nick LeForce
www.nickleforce.com

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem on love, wherever the topic might lead you.

  2. Journal or write a poem about love in friendship.

  3. How do you experience different types of love in your life. Consider looking up the Greek classification of 7 types of love and using that as your prompt.

  4. Journal or write a poem about the “promise” of love and what happens when we try to pin it down.

  5. What breed of desire might grip you? What happens to you and what is your experience when you are gripped by that breed of desire?

  6. Journal or write a poem about how love can take you to a place or space beyond all answers or need for any answers..

  7. Journal or write a poem about what gives you wings.

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