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

You Are The Future

You are the future, the immense morning sky
turning red over the prairies of eternity.
You are the rooster-crow after the night of time,
the dew, the early devotions, and the Daughter,
the Guest, the Ancient Mother, and Death.

You are the shape that changes its own shape,
that climbs out of fate, towering,
that which has never shouted for, and never mourned for,
and no more explored than a savage wood.

You are the meaning deepest inside things,
that never reveals the secret of its owner.
And how you look depends on where we are:
from a boat, you are shore, from the shore a boat.

—Ranier Maria Rilke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke

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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 see it in the young ones -- they’re bright eyes roving in an endless future, yet to answer the question of what to be when grown-up. How eager they are to go, how ready to abandon themselves in play, how quick to jump for joy at the slightest delight. Barring illness, accident, or misfortune, they have a lifetime ahead of them. We elders look to the young and say you are the future. They will, after all, be the ones who inherit the world we elders leave behind. We can no longer take time for granted. Our attention turns  from shaping the world to embracing what we have and giving what we can. Perhaps the greatest gift of aging is recognizing the preciousness of time: that this moment is the doorway to all that is. That is the message I get from Ranier Maria Rilke’s poem, You Are the Future, a designation he grants anyone, regardless of age. Perhaps all we need to be the future is to climb out of fate and back into life—undefined, unoccupied, a shape that changes its own shape, looking with timeless eyes and abandoning ourselves in play.

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem titled You Are The Future. To whom does the phrase apply? In what way?

  2. Rilke implies the you are the future whenever you identify with timeless things or events in the world—like the immense morning sky over the prairies of eternity or the rooster-crow, or the morning dew. Write your own version of timeless things in the world. What happens when you identify with them?

  3. Journal or write a poem about your early devotions. What are you devoted to every morning?

  4. Rilke mentions several archetypal personas: The Daughter, The Guest, The Ancient Mother, and Death. Write from the position of one of those (or any other) archetypal persona, wherever that may take you.

  5. Journal or write poem about the unexplored savage wood within you

  6. What might Rilke mean or refer to by saying: how you (you who are the future?) look depends on where we (we who are the observers) are: from a boat, you are shore, from the shore a boat.

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