Prompts

An experience in nature. . . Prompt #451

Today’s writing prompt is inspired by Poetic Medicine by John Fox, Infusing our poems with what nature teaches us:

A forest fire is awesome and frightening but clears the forest floor for new growth.

Metaphors and poetic images of earth can often express such feelings better than plain descriptive words, which seem to crack under the pressure of deep feeling. Feelings of grief might bring to mind images of winter’s coldness. Pablo Neruda crystalizes a wintry grief image:

Yes: seed germs, and grief, and everything that throbs

frightened in the crackling January light

will ripen, will burn, as the fruit burned ripe.

The insights we gain by observing nature, and the poems we make which include these insights, help us cope with our rage, grief and pain.

The poetry of earth offers us a chance to experience something more about life than our self-definition and ordinary language usually permit. Like the forest after the fire, this something more is full of new growth and unknown potential.

Writing Prompt: Choose an aspect of the natural world which you feel has something to teach you. It could be an animal, plant, or mineral. What specific quality does it express that speaks to you about your own life?

Or write about an experience in nature that had a profound effect on you.

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