Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Returning Birds” by Wisława Szymborska, and took a close look at “Paysage Azteeque 1950″ by Rufino Tomayo posted below.

Our prompt was: “Begin your writing with: “Rejoice, O reason…”.”

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.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday September 23rd at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Credit: Rufino Tomayo, Paysage Azteeque 1950 

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Returning Birds
  by Wisława Szymborska

This spring the birds came back again too early.
Rejoice, O reason: instinct can err, too.
It gathers wool, it dozes off — and down they fall
into the snow, into a foolish fate, a death
that doesn’t suit their well-wrought throats and splendid claws,
their honest cartilage and conscientious webbing,
the heart’s sensible sluice, the entrails’ maze,
the nave of ribs, the vertebrae in stunning enfilades,
feathers deserving their own wing in any crafts museum,
the Benedictine patience of the beak.

This is not a dirge — no, it’s only indignation.
An angel made of earthbound protein,
a living kite with glands straight from the Song of Songs,
singular in air, without number in the hand,
its tissues tied into a common knot
of place and time, as in an Aristotelian drama
unfolding to the wings’ applause,
falls down and lies beside a stone,
which in its own archaic, simpleminded way
sees life as a chain of failed attempts.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at a photo taken by Kathleen Sullivan and read the poem “Breakage” by Mary Oliver, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Tell a story of the broken and then opened.”

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.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday September 11th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Photo credit: Kathleen Sullivan

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“Breakage” by Mary Oliver

I go down to the edge of the sea. 
How everything shines in the morning light! 
The cusp of the whelk, 
the broken cupboard of the clam, 
the opened, blue mussels, 
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred— 
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split, 
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone. 
It’s like a schoolhouse 
of little words, 
thousands of words. 
First you figure out what each one means by itself, 
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop 

       full of moonlight.Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.   

Credit: Mary Oliver. Source: Poetry (August 2003)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “[i love them still]” by Fatimah Asghar, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Start your writing with ‘Scattered like a seed…‘”

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.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday August 5th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

[i love them still] by Fatimah Asghar

Copyright © 2026 by Fatimah Asghar. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 30, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Disclosure” by Camisha L. Jones, posted below.

Our prompt was:“Write about sounds that beckon.”

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.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday July 13th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Disclosure by Camisha L. Jones

I’m sorry, could you repeat that. I’m hard of hearing.

To the cashier 

To the receptionist 

To the insistent man asking directions on the street 

I’m sorry, I’m hard of hearing. Could you repeat that?

At the business meeting 

In the writing workshop 

On the phone to make a doctor’s appointment 

I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry-I’m-so-sorry-I’m-hard-for-the-hearing

Repeat. 

           Repeat. 

Hello, my name is Sorry

To full rooms of strangers 

I’m hard to hear 

I vomit apologies everywhere 

They fly on bat wings 

towards whatever sound beckons 

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry

           and repeating

                       and not hearing

Dear (again) 

I regret to inform you 

I       am

here

Copyright © 2020 by Camisha L. Jones. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 3, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt (p 9-10) from Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto, posted below.

Our prompt was: “what happens when time slows down.”

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.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday July 1st at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

“Island at the Center of the World” by Russell Shorto (p 9-10)

All that said, what originally captivated me about the Dutch documents — that they offered a way to reimagine New York City as a wilderness—stayed alive throughout my research. More than anything, then, this book invites you to do the impossible: to strip from your mental image of Manhattan Island all associations of power, concrete, and glass; to put time into full reverse, unfill the massive landfills, and undo the extensive leveling programs that flattened the hills and filled the gullies. To witness the return of waterfalls, to watch freshwater ponds form in place of asphalt intersections; to let buildings vanish and watch stands of pin oak, sweetgum, basswood, and hawthorne take their place. To imagine the return of salt marshes, mudflats, grasslands, of leopard frogs, grebes, cormorants, and bitterns; to discover newly pure estuaries encrusting themselves with scallops, lamp mussels, oysters, quahogs, and clams. To see maple-ringed meadows become numbered with deer and the higher elevations ruled by wolves. 

And then to stop the time machine, let it hover a moment on the south-most tip of an island poised between the Atlantic Ocean and the civilization of Europe on one side and a virgin continent on the other; to let that moment swell, hearing the screech of gulls and the slap of waves and imagining these same sounds, waves and birds, waves and birds, with regular interruptions by wracking storms, unchanged for dozens of centuries.

And then let time start forward once again as something comes into view on the horizon. Sails.

Credit: Russell Shorto

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Final Poem for My Father Misnamed in My Mouth” by Phillip B. Williams, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about Fatherlight.”

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.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday June 15th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Final Poem for My Father Misnamed in My Mouth by Phillip B. Williams

Sunlight still holds you and gives

your shapelessness to every room.

By noon, the kitchen catches your hands,

misshapen sunrays. The windows

have your eyes. Taken from me,

your body. I reorder my life with

absence. You are everywhere now

where once I could not find you

even in your own body. Death means

everything has become

possible. I’ve been told I have

your ways, your laughter haunts my mother

from my throat. Everything

is possible. Fatherlight

washes over the kitchen floor.

I try to hold a bit of kindness

for the dead and make of memory

a sponge to wash your corpse.

Your name is not addict or sir.

This is not a dream: you died

and were buried three times. Once,

after my birth. Again, against

your hellos shedding into closing doors,

your face a mask I placed over my face.

The final time, you beneath my feet. Was I

buried with you then? I will not call

what you had left anything

other than gone and sweet perhaps. I am

not your junior, but I fell in love

with being your son. Now what? Possibility

was a bird I once knew. It had one wing.

Credit: Phillip B. Williams

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting “Give me strength” by Louise Bird, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Describe your texture.”

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.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday June 5th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Give me strength by Louise Bird

Credit: Louise Bird