Mysteries: Doubt and Hope
A Vagabond Voices Living and Writing Prompt
Mystery keeps you
waking from dream and
wandering unclad and barefoot
in grasses frozen and prickling
with night’s passing. Wake
and wonder what new
vision will lift
from the mist of parting
sleep storms and warming
earth when each day the answer
is more riddle
than you ever conceived,
possibility splits wide and you ask — what will
today drop
at these sleep-walking feet?
Your answer:
anything.
What are the mysteries in your life?
Do you wake up and wonder what the day holds?
Think that it might be one thing while you sip your coffee…only to be surprised, hijacked by events of the day?
How many times have you tangoed with the shift beneath your feet in the past months?…Stuterstepped over reversal of fortune for you…for humanity. Or, maybe you’re still not sure what the beat of the moment is.
And then…what about those older mysteries? The little stories that have gone unanswered — or the big ones? The monuments to something you’re no longer sure you understand.
Maybe your mysteries are the stars winking down that comfort us with our incapacity to understand it all. But still musing at the way we give them names, stories, theories. The way we exalt them to planetary status only to demote them…
How does mystery feel to you these days?
I have found the unknown incredibly soothing lately. For reasons I’d rather explore in fiction, poetry, and doodle…
And you? How are you handling the uncertain, the surprising, the unknown?
Does mystery haunt you…or inspire you?
Tell us in a poem, a story, a snapshot, a collage…in your words simply put.
The story behind this prompt…
This prompt was inspired by our writing group and especially our book of the month: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay.
If you’ve read it…well, you know there are a few mysteries in the story, a final, unpublished chapter. And a setting that feels heavy with mysteries the characters don’t quite comprehend…Anyway, I’m not sure how to say more about the book without spoiling something!
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By Lisa Bolin
By Mary McGrath
