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 Swan

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is a letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the Swan when he nervously lets himself down

into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each minute more fully grown,
more like a king, composed, farther, and farther on.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Robert Bly

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 2/5/25 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

Perhaps it is in our human nature to dream that someday we will find ease in living, that we will somewhere find our element, that we will somehow be restored to our natural presence: one that, in some inexplicable way, requires nothing of us other than to be ourselves. How courtly we will then be: moving through the world smoothly, marvelously, effortlessly as the regal owners of our own lives.  Rainer Maria Rilke sees this possibility made manifest in The Swan lumbering awkwardly on the earth, as we humans do strung up in ropes of what is undone and held down by the burdens we carry and the gravity of the ground we stand on and cling to every day.  The Swan teaches us that we will never live up to our ropes and burdens; that we must let ourselves down completely and in the death of that cavernous disappointment, bereft of solid ground, find ourselves buoyed by the fluidity of life, which receives us and carries us, out of the cavern, wave after wave, each minute somehow more composed, more fully grown, more regal in our bearing.

Prompt Ideas

1. Journal or write a poem about clumsy living or titled Clumsy Living

2. Write about lumbering through life in the ropes that bind you: things not done, projects left unfinished, relationship gone fallow, things never said, or whatever ropes tug at you and impede free movement.

3. Journal or write a poem about the burdens that keep you grounded. What happens or what do you fear will happen if you let go of the ground?

4. Journal or write a poem about let down (disappointment). especially about letting down yourself. In what way does letting oneself down (facing your own self-disappointment) allow one to become more fully grown (grow up)?

5. Write about trust in life: being marvelously calm, pleased to be carried by your own life’s current.

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