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

Why I Am Happy

Now has come, an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.

I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.

And I know where it is.

William Stsafford
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-e-stafford

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:

The next Read-Around is 3/12/25 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

As an American, we have the right to pursue happiness. It’s written into our constitution. And we are taught to be good consumers, hunters of the elusive bird, with our quivers full of Cupid-arrows, aiming for what we seek, feasting mostly on the downside of comparatives, nothing quite right, perpetually at a loss for a moment in the light. Scientific research indicates that those who make happiness a goal are generally less happy than those who do not. It's called the paradox of pursuit, which puts the goal always just out of reach. There is wisdom in new age notion of a happy place within us. Willam Stafford knows where it is for him, as depicted in his poem, Why I Am Happy.  Do you know your happy place and where it lives inside of you?

Prompt Ideas

1. Journal or write a poem about a state of mind you know well or frequent and title it, Why I am (X)…

2. Journal or write poem about an easy time in your life. How did you experience it? Did you let it roll? Try o milk it? Get ready for the “other shoe to drop?”

3. Do you have a happy place inside? If so, what is the imaginal context? Describe it.

4. Stafford describes a lake “so blue and far nobody owns it.” How it stays blue and free , goes on and on, no matter what happens in the world. Do you have an inner place, of can you imagine one, that is undisturbed by the world. Journal or write about it.

5. Journal or write “nature talk.” For instance, from Stafford’s poem, What does the willow hear in the wind?

6. Use Stafford’s line, “I laugh and cry for every turn of the world” and write what that inspires.

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