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

What We Lean On

The seed is an edible
but we need its fruit.

The sun untouchable
but we need its light.

The flood undrinkable
but our roots needed its
water.

And the world of sleep
unknown but we
still need its rest.

Our depth of thought
and feeling is like the
pole of fairy man uses
to cross a river.

We can’t see what it
touches way down,
though it studies
us as we go.

—Mark Nepo
From The Half Life of Angels

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 3/26/25 at 5:00 PM PDT

My Thoughts

The metaphoric quality of words allows a single word to take on a variety of meanings. In English, the word, lean, generally refers to a sloping position of one object against another. Metaphorically, it can represent support, as in something or someone that we “lean on,” or rely on. We might lean on faith or philosophy; we might lean on friends or family; we might lean on routines and habits; we might lean on nature, parks, or places. Most of the things that we lean on likely go unnoticed unless brought to our attention, especially out of risk of loss or depth of appreciation. Mark Nepo’s poem, What We Lean On, considers what we might unknowably lean on as we navigate our days. Perhaps you have been to a place where you were ferried across a river by a boatman who used a long stick to steady the boat and push it along. Nepo’s poem offers a variety of things we rely on without knowing or that come to us from a seemingly removed source: light from the untouchable sun, rest from the unknowable world of sleep. What steadies you like the boatman’s pole that touches the unknowable riverbed? What do you lean on to help navigate your day’s crossing?

Prompt Ideas

1. Use Mark Nepo’s poem title as your prompt: What We (I) Lean On, and journal or write a poem based on that seed.

2. Write a list of things you rely on that come from an unknowable or distant source.

3. Pick your own metaphoric version for what you lean on (a staff, as in walking stick or group of people, a role, a tree, like the tree of life, etc.)

4. Write about a particular experience of leaning on something or someone—does it give you strength, make you feel dependent, etc.? When is leaning on something healthy and when unhealthy?

5. Journal or write about a poem about someone or something that leans on you (family, friends, pets, etc). Why is it like to be leaned on?

6. Consider other idiomatic uses of lean and pick one to prompt your writing: lean in, lean toward, lean over, lean and mean, a lean patch, etc.

7. In mythology, the ferryman symbolizes a transition. Journal or write a poem about who or what helped you make a difficult transition in life.

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