Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use by Ada Limon, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a word you have refused to use.” 

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Please join us for our next session Friday April 22nd at 12pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use by Ada Limon

All these great barns out here in the outskirts,
black creosote boards knee-deep in the 
     bluegrass.
They look so beautifully abandoned, even in 
     use.
You say they look like arks after the sea’s
dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,
and I think of that walk in the valley where
J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood 
     there,
low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish 
     moss,
and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our 
     pockets,
woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.
So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,
its clouds in simple animal shapes we could 
     name
though we knew they were really just clouds—
disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.

Poem copyright ©2012 by Ada Limón