Because Even the Word Obstacle is an Obstacle
By: Alison Luterman + writing prompt + voice note
To my readers! I am trying something new today. I experimented with a voice note where I share a bit about the process of intuitive and grief writing and how it is a way into our writing, creativity, emotions, and noticing the details of our lives. Toward the middle, I read the poem below and give you some possible jump-off lines as writing prompts to get you started. If you liked this voice note, I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment or send me a message. Thank you for listening, and enjoy your writing process!
Try to love everything that gets in your way:
The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin doing leg exercises in your lane
while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
one for every item on your to-do list.
The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water
like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and
whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
Teachers all. Learn to be small
and swim past obstacles like a minnow,
without grudges or memory. Dart
toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,
is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,
in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life, and
keep going. Swim by an uncle
in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
how to hold his breath underwater,
even though kids aren’t supposed
to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,
years from now, this boy
who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
you want to touch and turn
may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,
raising his champagne glass in a toast
when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
but he’ll come up like a cork,
alive. So your moment
of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,
because if something is in your way, it is
going your way, the way
of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.
Writing Prompts
Try to love everything that gets in your way
Something in your way, is going your way
The way of all beings: toward darkness, toward light