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

A Glint

I watched a glint of morning sunlight,
climbing a thread of spider’s silk
in a gentle breeze. It shinnied
up from the tip of a dewy stock of grass
to an overhanging branch, then
disappeared into the leaves. But soon
another followed, and then another,
glint after glint, and though they made
no sound, what I could see was music,
not melody but one clear, shining note,
plucked over and over, as if the sun
were tuning the day, then handing it
to me so I could be the one to play it

—Ted Kooser
https://www.tedkooser.net

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:

Writing From The Inside Out


The next Read-Around is 7/30/26 at
5:00 PM PDT — 8:00 PM EDT

My Thoughts

I love the kiss on my skin from the slightest cool breeze on a hot summer day, easy to notice without noting it, easy to miss without indulging in the delicate immediacy of sensation that webs eyes and ears to the heart in a glint. It's not found on a grocery list or in the hunt down aisles of packaged products and canned goods. It’s hidden in the here and gone of the everyday, held in that breathy stillness that sways an uptick, easily brushed away in the relentless waves of time when we are mostly just trying to stay afloat. We're so mired in our own steerage we lose sight of what's right in front of us. That's why we need poetry, which can lift us out of our sea of troubles, align our eyes and ears to the approximations of the heart, and restore our attention to what nourishes the spirit — the way William Blake did in a grain of sand or Ted Kooser does with a thread of spider’s silk in his poetic restorative, A Glint. How might you align with your heart’s approximations? What glint of something might be your restorative?

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about an experience that gave you a glint of something (like Kooser with a spider web) and it shifted you in a moment.

  2. Journal or write a poem about breezes, whatever that might stir in you or bring to mind.

  3. Write about spider silk and spider webs, literally or metaphirically.

  4. Journal or write a poem about a simple synesthesia: hearing sounds in a pulsing light, seeing color in the hum of machinery, feeling the touch of frangrances on your fingertips

  5. Write about a moment when a simple sight or sound grabbed your attention and something changed inside of you (uplifted your outlook, transformed your mood, opened your eyes to beauty)

  6. Imagine you have been gifted a play day and you, like Kooser, get to be the one that plays it. Write about that day—what you might want in it not bucket list items for long-term dreams, just a little thing you'd want in a play daty

  7. As usual, write about whatever else inspires you form the poem or from life.