If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

NO READ-AROUND THIS WEEK!
Next Read-Around is 10/10/24 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

My Thoughts

Heliophilia is the ”desire to stay in the sun/love of sunlight” as Aimee Nezhukumatathil points out in her poem, Heliophilia. It is an apt poem for the seasonal shift of fall into winter: day light hours grow shorter, skies grow dimmer, and temperatures drop lower. This is time when dedicated heliophiliacs feel the first hint of sadness in their grieving bones. Those with means and wings will follow a migratory impulse stirring them up to head toward the equator.  Those without means or wings ready themselves for the sad slump with meds and full spectrum lights. Those lovers of the sun such as myself (who do not suffer affliction from winter’s wedge dampening the sun’s rays) take the lessining of light as a gift. Personally, I look forward to the long, dark evenings free from the sirens’ seductive call of the outside: sequestered in the house, with time to turn inward, time to create, time to knit freindships closer together, and time to puzzle out our pictures of life. I know it will not be long before I, like all true heliophiliacs, start secretly counting the days to winter’s end. I will welcome the lengthening of light with equal verve in the late days of winter as I now welcome the dark in these early days of autumn. The day will come when I turn to the Dark Horse and sing along to, Here Comes the Sun, which, by the way, is the most streamed song from the entire canon of the Beatles.

Heliophilia

Desire to stay in the sun/love of sunlight

Don’t call it an affliction –
call it affection. I’d stay under
the sun all day, never hiding
under a copse of trees. If I knew

I wouldn’t burn, but isn’t it
more accurate – that I burn
for the sun? To be pulled to the light
is nothing to be ashamed of: look.

flowers, butterflies, seals, lounging
on a rock. Rhubarb sings in dark gardens
but truth be told it sounds more like
a wet cracking and popping. I think

it secretly counts the hours till it can turn
towards the sun again. For me, the sun
has always been easy to love, as easy
as it is to love whatever small light

bees bestow on fallen leaves –- easy
to love the light they give just before
they crawl into a honey-hungry sleep,
just before the first fall of snow.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil
https://aimeenez.net/bio

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about the love of sunlight.

  2. The phrase a place in the sun refers to a very good or desirable position or a place where you will be happy and feel contented. What or where is your place in the sun? Journal or write about what that means to you. You can use the stem sentence, My place in the sun is…

  3. Consider the relationship between affection (fondness or liking) and affliction (causing pain or suffering). When can an affection become an affliction?

  4. The poet says she ”burns for the sun.” Journal or write a poem about something forwhich you burn.

  5. Journal or write a poem describing what pulls you to the light (whatever that may mean to you.) Or describe what it is like (for a plant, an animal, or a person) to turn toward the sun.

  6. Rhubarbs actually do have growth spurts that make cracking and popping sounds as they pop open in the night. Journal or write a poem using the sound(s) (real or imagined) of something popping or opening.

  7. Write about something you find easy to love.

  8. Journal or write a poem about the advantages of having darkness fall earlier. What do you love with the dark evenings? What do you find enjoyable about being sequestered in the house?

  9. As usual, write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.