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:

Next Read-Around is 7/3/25 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

A murmuration of starlings is a sight to see, creating a a black cloud morphing in the day sky while flying near each other with wingtip precision, making adjustments according to their neighbors. Science says there is no central intelligence running the show. The changing shapes are merely an outcome of the rules of murmuration: maintaining a minimum distance from nearby birds, matching the speed and direction of neighbors, and avoiding collisions. In the poem, Starlings, Maggie Smith describes the morphing murmuration as the random act of “a thousand arrows, pointing “one way, then another” without belonging to sky or earth or to us. And then she tilts the random equation in a question: Isn’t that what you’ve been taught—that nothing is ours? That a knot in a tree that looks like an eye youthink it sees you. But of course it doesn’t. Or does it?

Starlings

The starlings choose one piece of sky above the river

& pour themselves in. They must be a thousand arrows

pointing in unison one way, then another. That bit of blue

doesn’t belong to them, and they don’t belong to the sky,

or to the earth, or to us. Isn’t that what you’ve been taught—

nothing is ours? Haven’t you learned to keep the loosest

possible hold? The small portion of sky boils with birds.

Near the river’s edge, one birch has a knot so much

like an eye, you think it sees you. But of course it doesn’t.

—Maggie Smith
https://maggiesmithpoet.com/

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem with your own description of a murmuration of starlings or any flockof birds in flight.

  2. Journal or write a poem about the movement of any large groupof animals or insects: (wildebeasts, caribou, salmon, ants.

  3. Write a poem about the freedom and constraints of belonging.

  4. Smith poses the question; haven’t you learned to keep the loosest hold? Use that line as your prompt, whatever it may mean to you. What does it apply to? What does it serve? When is it wise orunwise to keep the loosest hold on something?

  5. Given what Science says about Starling murmuration, I took Smiths lines about not belonging to reflect the idea that there is no greater intelligence at work in murmuration. How does belonging relate to spirtuality?

  6. Jpurna lor write a poem using the idea that nothing is ours.

  7. Write about anything in the poem or in life that inspires you.