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

The Second Music

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.

When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.

—Annie Lighthart
https://www.annielighthart.com/

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 4/9/25 at 5:00 PM PDT

My Thoughts

Watch a movie without the soundtrack and the emotional impact drains away or becomes almost negligible. Some researchers even consider music the first language or a kind of proto-language that evolved into modern day languages with all the subtlety, depth, and richness they convey. Music seems to me to be the language of feeling and can move us to dance with heavenly abandon or cower in hellish fears. Manufactured music is everywhere around us, playing through piped speakers in public places and directly into our ears from gadgets, which hold hundreds of thousands of songs at our fingertips. We have the power to create playlists for any mood we wish to evoke or ambience we wish to amplify.  Whether loudly blared or softly in the background, music is a powerful tool in the arsenal of marketers and influencers that want access to our minds, our hearts, and our wallets. We have become so accustomed to manufactured music as the primary mode of expression, we miss another kind that Annie Lighthart calls, The Second Music: the symphony of sounds that occur naturally around us, the sounds of nature, the chatter of children, the rumble of a passing train and what it stirs in us when we set our heart to it.

Prompt Ideas

1. Journal or write a poem prompted by the sounds occurring around you (excluding manufactured music). Notice how the sounds affect you or what they inspire in you.

2. How would you describe what Lighthart calls The Second Music? She described it, at least for the moment that inspired the poem, as lower, steady, more faithful, with notes that touch as gently as fingertips. What attributes would you describe to your moment of second music?

3. What might you do, or need to do, to set your heart to hear The Second Music? In what way might this natural background be revealing the truth of your life or make you aware of the beauty of “this mortal time” with all of its irrevocable change?

4. What sounds are you especially tuned to in your life? The sound of someone’s footsteps in the house? The rumble of a passing train? Birds chirping the morning? The hum of appliances? The selected ringtone assigned to a person? Describe the sound, what it means to you, and what happens inside of you and what you do when you hear it.

5. Have you created playlists of music? Do you have playlists for specific activities or moments? Use the mood or magic of that playlist for your composition.

6. What background music might you choose for specific moments in your life? For instance, what music would you like to play when step out the door of your house to go out in the world? What music for coming home?

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