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
Ask Me
Sometime when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt - ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
by William Stafford
“I give you the end of a golden string, only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate built in Jerusalem's wall.”
William Stafford, interviewed with Robert Bly, used William Blake’s quote above to describe how he composed a poem by finding a detail in life, any detail, and, like a thread, following it gently into a poem.
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.
Register Here:
Next Read Around is July 31, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST
My Thoughts
There are many truths that live inside of us of which we are unaware. Some of these truths are not even formed until we begin an inquiry. Or until we are confronted by someone or a situation that requires us to examine deeply our own beliefs and ideas about life. And there are some things we just cannot easily talk about except under favorable conditions. To me, the most profound thing about Stafford’s poem, Ask Me, is implicit: that there are some questions we cannot answer and some things we cannot speak of without cracking our heart open. Perhaps we cannot put words to them at all. We have to rely on some silent current to convey them or we have to freeze them and be cold toward them, label them as mistakes, to show them to others.
And then there is the anam cara, the soul friend, the one that listens to the hidden and hears the comings and goings that hold the stillness in you across your life. Don’t fret if there is no one in that role for you at this time in your life. Why not pick someone, find a time and a place, and be that to them. Sit down with them and ask: “What would you love if you didn’t have to love anything?” Let your heart be an echo chamber to them. If they turn the question on you, pause and feel this…this way of heartening each other, then say, “This. I would love...this.”
Week 16 Prompt Menu
Write about what conditions or situations in life permit you to ask deep questions or allow you to find and speak a truth you might not otherwise have access to or be able to share.
Write about the “mistakes” you have made. You can use the prompt: The biggest mistake I made in my life is…
What gets you to label an act as a mistake? For instance, I once changed my driving route due to heavy traffic only to find heavy traffic on the new route. Then I chided myself for making a mistake as if I should have had pre-knowledge of the conditions on the second route (this was long before GPS).
Stafford’s line: “ask me whether what I have done is my life,” posits the possibility that the deeds or actions you have done may or may not be what composes your life. Take the question as a prompt: Is what you have done your life? In what way is it and in what way is it not? If what you do is not your life, then what is?
Track how others come into your thoughts. What brings someone to mind. How do they occupy your thoughts? What do you do with the others that you carry inside of you?
Think of people that have helped or have hurt you. Then answer the question: What difference has their strongest love or hate made?
Imagine your life as a frozen river. What is frozen and what is still moving in the deep current under the ice?
Imagine your life is a river and you have come to let it teach you or tell you its secrets. What does it say?
Go sit by a river for a while, listen to it. and write whatever you are inspired to write while there.
Write from whatever else in the poem inspires you or from elsewhere in your life.