Read the poem
Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you
Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…
Use the selection of prompts below the poem
Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…
Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes
Flowering
Pick a crevice
a homey gap
between stones
and make it your own.
Grow a life here
from wind, rain,
and the memories
of ancients embedded
in limestone.
The bees will use you
for their sweet honey.
The rock will soften
under your touch. You will
drum oyster from fog
and hold it. Your presence
will build soil.
This is all we have
in this life, all we own:
a flowering
an opening
a gap between stones
for tiny tender roots.
by Linda Buckmaster
https://lindabuckmaster.com
Please join in for Round 4 of Writing From The Inside Out by attending the July 2020 read-around sessions on Friday afternoons (it’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email.
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Next Read Around is July 17, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST
My Thoughts
There is a legendary cypress tree on the Monterey coast of California that appears to grow out of rock. It is a testament to the resilience of nature in the way roots find the soil in tiny crevices and cracks between otherwise solid rock and give rise to trees and plants that achieve surprising heights or grow in ways that defy the odds against them. Linda Buckmaster’s poem, Flowering, suggests we too can find the “"homey gap” in the hardships of our lives and sink our roots into something deeper, something that nourishes us. We are a part of nature and that means that we, too, can grow strong and beautiful despite the troubled conditions of the world.
Flowering, also invites us to consider an idea that is both deeply profound and potentially disturbing: that the only thing we can really “own” is our roots in life and the flowering we make of it. The poem sent me on a trip to explore the concept of ownership from societal, personal, and experiential perspectives. We can understand ownership relatively easily in relationship to things and property (although there has been healthy debate about it in jurisprudence). But what does it mean to take ownership of your health or a job? How does it apply to a relationship? What does it mean to own your life? These are beautiful and perplexing questions worthy of the poet’s pen. You can take those queries as prompts or use the ones below to explore your own form of flowering in these pandemic troubled times.
Week 14 Prompt Menu
What crevice or “homey gap'“ did you make your own? How did you do it? How does ownership of a thing take shape in you?
Conversely, write about what or whom owns you? Go beyond the obvious (for instance the house owns me because I have to take care of it).
Buckmaster’s poem states, “Grow a life here from wind, rain, and the memories of ancients.” What elements and memories do you grow your life from? Write from the stem sentence: I grow my life from…
What are your memories embedded in? Take a tour of your house or a spot that holds memories for you and write what comes of it. If the walls have ears, as they say, what memories are embedded in the walls of your house?
In what ways do life and others use you to make their sweet honey? Note: if you don’t like “use,” here’s a variation: How does the world around you benefit from your thriving? How do life and others draw sweet honey from you?
What “softens under your touch?? What grows out of the soil your presence builds?
Write from the stem sentence: All we have in this life is…
Describe how you are “flowering;” or describe how someone you know is “flowering.”
Write from whatever else in the poem inspires you or from elsewhere in your life.