8/26/26 – A Poem by Mary Oliver
Reflective writing prompt:
Write about a wild and precious life.
8/5/26 Workshop – A Poem by Carol Moog
ANGRY RED PLANET
She sat but not still
Turning and twisting
Elongating her spine
Crumpling over her lap
Rotating her nec
Squeezing her shoulder blades together
Deepening sighs
Cumulus crimson
Images of Mars surfaced
The angry red planet
North star of her dreams
Remembering
Touching the scarlet cover
Tracing the black lettering
Checking it out of the library
Reverently carrying it home
Hidden in her bookbag
Racing upstairs
Consuming each page under the covers
Late
Very late
Midnight on Mars
Her true ancestral home
Reflective writing prompt:
Write about an ancestral home
7/8/26 Workshop – A Poem by Monica Youn
A Parking Lot in West Houston
Angels are unthinkable
in hot weather
except in some tropical locales, where
from time to time, the women catch one in their nets,
hang it dry, and fashion it into a lantern
that will burn forever on its own inexhaustible oils.
But here—shins smocked with heat rash,
the supersaturated air. We no longer believe
in energies pure enough not to carry heat,
nor in connections—the thought of someone
somewhere warming the air we breathe
that one degree more . . . .
In a packed pub during the World Cup final,
a bony redhead woman gripped my arm
too hard. I could see how a bloke might fancy you.
Like a child’s perfect outline in fast-melting snow,
her wet handprint on my skin, disappearing.
The crowd boiling over, a steam jet: Brrra-zil!
And Paris—a heroin addict
who put her hypodermic
to my throat: Je suis malade.
J’ai besoin de medicaments.
Grabbing her wrist, I saw
her forearm’s tight net sleeve of drying blood.
I don’t like to be touched.
I stand in this mammoth parking lot,
car doors open, letting the air conditioner
run for a while before getting in.
The heat presses down equally
everywhere. It wants to focus itself,
to vaporize something instantaneously,
efficiently—that shopping cart, maybe,
or that half-crushed brown-glass bottle—
but can’t quite. Asphalt softens in the sun.
Nothing’s detachable.
The silvery zigzag line
stitching the tarmac to the sky around the edges
is no breeze, just a trick of heat.
My splayed-out compact car half-sunk
in the tar pit of its own shadow—
strong-shouldered, straining
to lift its vestigial wings.
Reflective write prompt:
Write about being in an unexpected moment.
Reftective writing from the prompt:
A knock
And then
“Hello”
His voice booms
through the closed door
Above the din
of the quiet displacement of air
“Hello”
The voice bellows
With an urgent insistence
that demands attention
Which angers and frustrates me
– Sheila Lee
On a train in the New York subway. The car is not particularly crowded. Across from me, sleeping under his coat, one of New York’s homeless lies on two seats. I read my book, glancing at this man periodically. What must it be like to have to ride on the train to have a sheltered place to sleep? The train pulls into my station. I take a 20 dollar bill, fold it into quarters and place it on the man’s chest tucked under his coat. I look up and see the man sitting at the seat on the other side of the door watching me. I nod and he nods back. I get off the train.
– Sig-Linda Jacobson
6/10/26 Workshop – A Poem By Giacomo Leopardi
THE INFINITE
Always to me beloved was this lonely hillside
And the hedgerow creeping over and always hiding
The distances, the horizon’s furthest reaches.
But as I sit and gaze, there is an endless
Space still beyond, there is a more than mortal
Silence spread out to the last depth of peace,
Which in my thought I shape until my heart
Scarcely can hide a fear. And as the wind
Comes through the copses sighing to my ears,
The infinite silence and the passing voice
I must compare: remembering the seasons,
Quiet in dead eternity, and the present,
Living and sounding still. And into this
Immensity my thought sinks ever drowning,
And it is sweet to shipwreck in such a sea.
5/27/26 – A Poem By Craig Arnold
Bird-Understander
Of many reasons I love you here is one
the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alright
so you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminal all the people
ignoring it because they do not know
what to do with it except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to death
it makes you terribly terribly sad
You wish you could take the bird outside
and set it free or (failing that)
call a bird-understander
to come help the bird
All you can do is notice the bird
and feel for the bird and write
to tell me how language feels
impossibly useless
but you are wrong
You are a bird-understander
better than I could ever be
who make so many noises
and call them song
These are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurt
you have offered them
to me I am only
giving them back
if only I could show you
how very useless
they are not
Reflective writing prompt:
Write about what can’t be understood
5/6/26 Workshop – A Poem by Dinah Ryan
4/22/26 Workshop – A Poem by Mary Oliver
Buck Moon—From a Field Guide to Insects
Eight-eight thousand six-hundred
different species in North America. In the trees, the grasses
around us. Maybe more, maybe
several million on each acre of earth. This one
as well as any other. Where you are standing
at dusk. Where the moon
appears to be climbing the eastern sky. Where the wind
seems to be traveling through the trees, and the frogs
are content in their black ponds or else
why do they sing? Where you feel
a power that is not you but flows
into you like a river. Where you lie down and breathe
the sweet honey of the grass and count
the stars: where you fall asleep listening
to the simple chords repeated, repeated.
Where, resting, you feel
the perfection, the rising, the happiness
of their dark wings
Reflective writing prompt
Write about something that “bugs” you.
4/16/26 Workshop – Film Screening and Photo Review from “Milk Factory”
Photos from “Milk Factory” by Corinne May Botz
4.1.26 Workshop – Dog Poems by Scott Browning
Scott Browning
The Protector
I am the protector
My human said so
I determine my vector
And away I go
Who is the threat?
A question I forever consider
Will they be identified by the Vet?
Are they attacking my litter?
The mail carrier tops the list
I’m not sure why
The smell of other dogs in the mist
Bundles of mail, no one will die
My job may not be well defined
I know I am here to protect
But I am inclined to be kind
So, my bark has an unintended effect.
Insipid Humans
Fluffy, the name they gave me.
I was known by my comrades as Atlantis,
but to these insipid humans
Fluffy, they call
and to this name, if I wish to eat,
I must respond
A warrior I
But now, dressed in a sweater
and Santa hat
I pretend that a tummy rub is sufficient
to dull the grief of battles no longer fought.
Reflective writing prompt
As a dog, a pet, or animal, write something to a human.