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 Invention of Heaven

The mind becomes a field of snow
but then the snow melts and the dandelions
blink on and you can walk through them,
your trousers plastered with dew.
They’re all waiting for you but first
here’s a booth where you can win

a peacock feather for bursting a balloon,
a man in huge stripes shouting about
a boy who is half swan, the biggest
pig in the world. Then you will pass
tractors pulling other tractors,
trees snagged with bright wrappers

and then you will come to a river
and then you will wash your face.

—Dean Young
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/dean-young

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 1/29/25 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

It snowed here the past couple of days.  Even under the gray overcast sky, the whitened world glistens like a lure to a soul that loves beauty.  I layer four deep over my thermals and trudge out, the crunch of every step breaking ground. There are some promises that cannot be kept and heaven is certainly one of them. People will die in this beauty. A brief stint and I turn back in.  In another season, bright blue skies sharpen the edge of everything with color, cast shadows across undeniable clarity, and people fall in the heat of that beauty as well. We can walk through a field of dandelions, a thousand wishes at our feet, and one tick or one heart beat that has been mobilizing for years can attack us. That’s why I love Dean Young’s poem, The Invention of Heaven, which puts heaven in our hands. Whether we find heaven out there or in here, perhaps the best we can do, when heaven falls and we come to the river of life, is wash our face and come back to life clean.

Prompt Ideas

1. Journal or write a poem about the invention of heaven. Was it invented by you? Or by whom?

2. Write about the ever-changing nature of life: how one experience turns into another, one day into another, one season into another, especially by reference to particular experiences.

3. Journal or write a poem about the circus in your mind.

4. Young’s descriptive flourish is both simple and surprising—dandelions blink on; trousers plastered with dew; trees snagged with bright wrappers. Use similar unique descriptive qualities in your writing.

5. Young ends the poem with a surprising twist, stating you will come to a river and you will wash your face. Use that idea as your prompt and what what that means to you.

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