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

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive two near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo,
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his Jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ears fill up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide
The rain will never stop falling,

—Naomi Shihab Nye
https://poets.org/poem/shoulders

The Read Around

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 10/22/26 at
5:00 PM PDT — 8:00 PM EDT

My Thoughts

Any poem titled Shoulders, as is one of Naomi Shihab Nye’s, opens the imagination to a range of possibilities, from the literal to the metaphoric, without even knowing the content of the poem. The word has quite a following in the world of “organ language:” using a part of the body as metaphor to express a psychological aspect, quality, or condition of life. The idiom section of freedictionary.com has three long columns devoted to phrases and variations of phrases with the word shoulder in it. The most familiar idioms refer to a burden or weight, but other idioms also refer to resentment (a chip on the shoulder), help (a shoulder to cry on), work (put one’s shoulder into it), being vigilant (looking over one’s shoulder), and relationship strain (the cold shoulder). The shoulder of a man in Nye’s poem bears the weight of a world, not as a burden, but as precious cargo in the form of his son, who is sleeping on his shoulder while he takes care to safely cross a street in the rain. It is such poignant image, especially given a world that puts us at dangerous crossroads in our individual and collective lives on a daily basis.  Nye offers the scene before us as an instruction to carry each other as precious cargo across the dangerous crossroads or we may well risk existential suffering trapped in endless rain.

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem titled Shoulders and follow wherever that may lead you.

  2. Take any idiom with the word Shoulder and use it as your prompt. Or pick any other organ language idiom and use it as your prompt.

  3. Journal or write a. poem about what you carry as a burden and what you carry as precious cargo.

  4. Journal or write a poem about a dangerous crossing in your life; or about crossing a road in the rain.

  5. Nye describes the child on the man’s shoulder as the world’s most sensitive cargo. What, in your estimation, is the world’s most sensitive cargo? How is that cargo being handled in the world at this point? How are you handling it?

  6. Journal or write a poem about “the hum” of a dream deep inside, whether your own or someone else’s dream.

  7. Journal or write about how learning to carry each other as precious cargo might change, or even save, the world. Or write about what we collectively need to do to live in this world.

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