Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT October 29th 2025

17 Comments

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read the poem “Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World ” by Katie Farris, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a door you cannot close.”

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

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Please join us for our next session Friday November 21st at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

"Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World " by Katie Farris

To train myself to find, in the midst of hell
what isn't hell.

The body, bald, cancerous, but still
beautiful enough to
imagine living the body
washing the body
replacing a loose front
porch step the body chewing
what it takes to keep a body
going—

This scene has a tune
a language I can read a door
I cannot close I stand
within its wedge
a shield.

Why write love poetry in a burning world?
To train myself, in the midst of a burning world
to offer poems of love to a burning world.

Copyright © 2022 Katie Farris All rights reserved

17 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT October 29th 2025”

  1. Stef's avatar Stef

    Knock Knock

    It’s only a text message

    Not an invitation

    Not an explanation

    Certainly not an apology

    I don’t have to respond

    Don’t have to let the ghosts out

    Or in

    So I compromise

    Peeking through it

    Listening

    Hoping

    Fearing

    If I open another crack

    Does that mean I lost

    That I broke

    Or that maybe

    Just maybe

    Now the light can shine through

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply
    • reneekristine's avatar reneekristine

      The opening speaks to our modern moment: “it’s only a text message.” And yet, we know it’s more than electronically communicated text phone to phone. The short lines mimic our short text-speak, too.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      I don’t have to click on the message, allowing its words to haunt me. But what if..what if it’s something that brings me light? Is it worth the chance? I have been there, too Steph.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  2. Trevor Hebert's avatar Trevor Hebert

    Separation or protection? Which direction does fate seem to loom or glow?

    Faded hope of light or of everything doom and gloom? Alas, I’m sure we’ll soon know.

    I’m quite perplexed at ones reflection during the end of their time. One mans prison or one mans hell is another mans solemn mission; His heaven or so he tells the listening open ears.

    The door half opened, the door half closed?

    The cup half empty for the cup half full?

    I am between worlds. Stuck in separate codes.

    For one decides the other whilst fighting to coexist… but they can not.

    A situation arises where the decisions been made. By choice or by consequence is neither here nor there.

    Once you walk through, the locks click with a resounding thud, finalizing the thoughts you once had with no hope to redirect, no chance to change your mind, not now nor ever more.

    Fore the beauty you once knew to be is redefined to your very core as you read between the lines.

    As chaos ensues, you think to yourself: C’est la vie. Such is life. The Alpha, and then the Omega.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    • reneekristine's avatar reneekristine

      I appreciated the visceral “Once you walk through, the locks click with a resounding thud.” Since this writing leans philosophical, it imparts a tactile moment, an intentional jarring.

      Like

      Reply
  3. Outonalimb66's avatar Outonalimb66

    I’m in remission,

    so they say.

    after so many bouts of treatments

    and cancer journeys,

    Am I really?

    Could it always be somewhere

    lurking, ready to implode?

    I’d like to think that door

    is slammed shut.

    In the back of my mind

    I can still hear something

    quietly singing ,

    I’m still here,

    can I come out to play?

    I want to keep it caged

    and starve it to death

    Why should it get to live

    when it tried to end me?

    I block out the sound,

    replacing it with distractions,

    meditation, and prayers.

    I keep myself occupied

    with more lovely thoughts.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    • reneekristine's avatar reneekristine

      I love the ambiguous “so they say.” We use this phrase all the time–they say–without always considering that it’s so non-specific, and using it after the punchy opening “I’m in remission” really highlights a sense of what might feel tenuous about it.

      Like

      Reply
  4. Emily A's avatar Emily A

    DOOR OF OPPORTUNITY

    “When one door closes, another one opens but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell

    When one door closes, another one opens. 

    When one door closes, but doesn’t latch, it swings open again and then maybe another one doesn’t open?

    When one door closes and doesn’t latch and swings open again, you have to find a doorstop. 

    When one door closes AND stays shut, another one swings opens because maybe that one didn’t latch either?

    Should you put the doorstop on one of these doors? If so, which one? 

    Which one is supposed to be open and which one is supposed to be closed?

    If none of your doors open you have no where to go.

    If all your doors don’t latch, you can go anywhere. Everywhere. 

    If none of your doors latch, you have to choose. 

    If you depend on latches, you depend on chance. 

    Better just to choose some doors to stop.

    Better just to choose a door 

    and open it. 

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  5. reneekristine's avatar reneekristine

    The frost’s crisp script

    on the corners of the window, on

    the lawn, on the car’s windshield

    and what is it trying

    to tell me I need to know?

    Walk out to the windy

    morning, watch the house

    dissolve, pushed

    by gusts. But the path,

    cleared and good, takes me

    the well-worn way. The geese

    noisy with news, sky

    slate granite, or the earth

    below it, the arched branches

    of the low trees, the hawk

    I nearly miss, the neighborhood

    below still in slumber. The smudged

    handwriting of the frost in the first

    sunlight. My red door ahead.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      “My red door ahead” … source of warmth and comfort, where I can ponder what came before me in the vastness of the world. So many sights and sounds , Renee!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    • Emily A's avatar Emily A

      Upon reading this poem (after having heard you read it) I am noticing anew the “crisp script” – love that idea and the sounds of those words! Also I love how there’s hardly any color mentioned at all until the red door at the end and I love that it’s “my” red door – and not “the.” Beautiful!

      Like

      Reply
  6. michele348's avatar michele348

    About a door I cannot close~~~

    I look out the door of my mind’s eye…
    I see visions of bombs dropping
    on already devastated lands,
    I hear the cries of orphaned children,
    starving from the lack of food and love.

    Where do I look to divert my eyes,
    to find hope to revive my spirit?

    I see the gray squirrels scampering about the yard,
    trying to hoard a supply of acorns
    for the winter ahead.

    I see bald eagles flying above the field,
    their white head and tail feathers glistening in the sunlight
    as they soar and twist on the air currents.

    I see the last dandelion of the season,
    standing boldly against all that is dying,
    as if to say, “See me, I am here, I won’t be denied.”

    So, I may not be able to close that door completely,
    but I have found a light
    that still can pass through the small crack.

    And maybe that’s enough.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  7. rehavia6's avatar rehavia6

    The Door that Will Not Close

    I want to place a lid on my emotions 

    They erupt and explode like a volcano.

    I cannot turn away from my patients’ suffering.

    Their trials and tribulations haunt me.

    Grief over what I have lost

    is a constant companion.

    My regrets slide in under the cracks

    And can not escape.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  8. al3793's avatar al3793

    Write about a door I cannot close…

    The  world seems so bruised and wounded

    Burning, mutilated

    That the door into it should be slammed and never opened again

    To bar the toxicity, the disregard for humanity that would

    Try to pour into the hearts and souls

    Lodged behind that door.

    Yet, the door also permits a view into

    The beauty that lurks in that world even if it is

    Bruised, wounded, burning and mutilated.

    Even a brief, sideways look at the beautiful

    Can sustain the heart and soul in the midst of

    What seems insuperable.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  9. michele348's avatar michele348

    I saw an eagle flying above my head the other day, effortless soaring in the November sunlight. How did I manage this sight…by raising my eyes towards the heavens rather then casting them downward, surrendering to the sadness in the world.

    As you said, to shut the door completely, you may miss the glimmers of joy and happiness that may pass through.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

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