James Crews is a poet who teaches Poetry at the University at Albany and lives on a organic farm with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont.  Each Friday he posts a poem, sometimes one of his own that serves as more than just some mere Poetry Prompt.  He recently posted this: I’ve been sitting with this very short but very powerful poem by Jane Hirshfield ever since a dear friend passed it along to me earlier in the week. It speaks to the season so many of us might find ourselves inhabiting, not only that of autumn, but a moment of loss and transition during which we’re asked to accept such changes as necessary, and perhaps even sacred. In this poem, she invites us to see each shedding tree as an icon, “thinned/back to bare wood,/without diminishment.” And there is almost a haiku-like quality to those final three lines that urges us toward deeper contemplation of the richness inherent in these wooden beings. Perhaps what we see as loss and a kind of death each year as fall comes is really just wind and weather having worshipped the trees so much they are returned to their basic essence. In this way, we might reframe any difficult season when we are worn back to our essential selves as holy, worthy of worship for the way such trying times allow us to become something new. Autumn by Jane Hirshfield Again the wind flakes gold-leaf from the trees and the painting darkens— as if a thousand penitents kissed an icon till it thinned back to bare wood, without diminishment. Invitation for Writing & Reflection: How might you reframe a difficult season in your own life as sacred or holy, seeing how you were worn back to the truest version of yourself even while in pain?  It prompted me to write in kind: FALLING And just like that Summer fell into a colorfully crisp confetti of blazenous colors that never reached the ground Flutterings into what can’t always be planted but never fails to be garnered in whatsoevers that find us all softly soaringly sheltered in a cooling uplifting Breath A heavenly satisfied Sigh May this Fall Season bring you lots of Oooooh and A W E