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 the poem

  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

Instructions For The Journey

The self you leave behind 
is only a skin you have outgrown. 
Don’t grieve for it. 
Look to the wet, raw, unfinished 
self, the one you are becoming. 
The world, too, sheds it’s skin: 
politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days. 
It’s easy to lose this tenderly 
unfolding moment. Look for it 
as if it were the first green blade 
after a long winter. Listen for it 
as if it were the first clear tone 
in a place where dawn is heralded by bells. 

And if all that fails, 
wash your own dishes. 
Rinse them.
Stand in your kitchen at your sink. 
Let cold water run between your fingers. 
Feel it.

Pat Schneider
https://patschneider.com/pat/category/poems/page/2/

Please join in for Round 7 of Writing From The Inside Out by attending the October 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 October 23, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

The poet and author, Mark Nepo, tells the story of an indigenous tribe from the New Hebrides islands that explains how we became human. Once, long ago, we lived forever by shedding our old skin and dropping it into the river of life. One day, an old woman dropped her old skin into the river and noticed that it got caught on a tree branch. On the way back to the village, she saw her granddaughter and, with elation, greeted her. But her granddaughter did not recognize her, was frightened and ran off. The woman was stricken with grief and, in her sorrow, remembered her old skin caught on the branch. She ran back, delighted to see it was still there. The moment she slipped it back on, she became the first human and lost the ability to live forever.

The desire to be young again is so compelling that it has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry. The mythical fountain of youth, or something similar, has been enshrined in stories throughout time. We all have moments of longing to shed an old skin that may feel like a straight-jacket or to excise something that grips us from the past. But, as the story reveals, and as is implied in Pat Schneider's poem, Instructions For The Journey, there is a cost in shedding the past: something we may lose with it, that we may also grieve. What Schneider offers, at the end of her piece, is an exquisite attention to the moment, which lives between gain and grief and is always present and available, should we choose to embrace it. 

Week 28 Prompt Menu

  1. What self are you leaving behind? One way to think of this is to consider a role in life (family role, work role, social role, etc.) that you are either being forced to, or choosing to, leave behind. What circumstance or desire is prompting this change? What are the benefits and costs of making the change?

  2. Instead of a role, think of an identity tag (I am…kind; foolish, determined, controlling, etc.) that is changing or that you wish to change.

  3. Describe the “wet, raw, unfinished self” you are becoming?

  4. We are living in tumultuous times and it certainly seems as if the world is shedding an old skin. Write about a transformation you see happening in the world around you by considering it an old skin that is being shed.

  5. Pick any transformation, personal or worldly, that is currently underway. What are the signs, the first green blades in the long winter, or the first clear bell heralding the new arrival or that indicate a fundamental change is truly underway.

  6. Consider a transformation that you experienced in the past and that has come to fruition and describe the steps in the journey. There are some relatively clear markers in life when we take on a new role (new job roles, getting married, having children/grandchildren; retiring, etc.). Write the signs that indicated steps on your journey of becoming. For instance, it took me 10 years to embrace the identity of the “transformational poet” and there were a few very clear markings in that journey, like when I first publicly called myself a poet..

  7. Schneider ends her poem with an alternative to seeking signs of change by reference to the simple act of “washing your own dishes.” What simple acts can help you weather the changes in times of uncertainty.

  8. Schneider’s title, Instructions For The Journey, offers a great prompt for your own poem about life in general (and that does not need to be limited to shedding skin, or becoming, or changing). What “instructions for the journey” might you offer?

  9. Write from whatever else in the poem inspires you or from elsewhere in your life.