The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long

Before I share my poem for the week, I want to make sure you get this important news: Within the next week or so, I’ll be changing the name of 100 Poems to Wild Ground. You can learn more about this change at the bottom of this post. And now, today’s poem . . .

“The arc of the moral universe is long.” - MLK Jr

The middle of the rainbow
stripes the field—
autumn come early,

OYG, radiant, shining,
unclenched from R,
apart from BIV.

Who says the edges
are the ones
to shape the arc?

The Prompt

The world is so full of hurt right now—all the little hurts that are present all the time, all the cutting wounds of interpersonal drama or heartbreak or abuse, the hurts of living in a mortal body, the wound of living on a wounded planet, plus the polarization, inequality, and brutal injustices of this moment in history. To retain sanity, kindness, integrity, compassion, humor, and open hearts, we need beauty. We need it like we need water and air.

So for today’s prompt, dears, just go find something beautiful and let yourself soak it up. It might be a rainbow or a sunset or a tiny drop of morning dew. It might be the softness of your puppy’s ears or the warmth of a lover’s hug. It might be the unexpected kindness of a stranger—or the feeling you get when you offer that kindness outward. For ten minutes or an hour or a day, let your life be a scavenger hunt for beauty, and let yourself believe that you will find it.

When you do find it, let it fill you. Bask in the sound or the taste or the sight or the feeling. What happens in your body when you experience something beautiful? Soften and settle into these sensations. Let them grow as big as they want to grow. Or let them be lovely little whispers if that’s what they are. Imagine this beauty subtly reshaping your interior—carving out a little more space, perhaps. Brushing away some dusty belief or resentment that you no longer need. Warming some chilled and forgotten corner of you.

If this experience of beauty inspires a poem, then let yourself pour words onto the page! Maybe your poem will be purely descriptive—detailing the beauty you’ve experienced. Or perhaps that beauty has a message for you about something seemingly unrelated? Let yourself be curious. Let yourself go down paths without knowing where they end.

On the other hand, maybe your heart wants to create something other than a poem right now. If you find something else wanting to break into being—a drawing, a blog post, a creative gift for a friend, a creative act of community service, a gooey chocolate cake with lots of frosting—then let that longing have full expression. I’d love to hear about or see those creations, too! Thank you for the ways you share yourselves in the comments thread. It lights up my life!

Changes to Come: Wild Ground

When I first launched 100 Poems in January 2024, it was with the intention of writing and sharing 100 poems in that calendar year—and inviting others to do so with me. I managed to do that, and many of you lovelies joined me for the ride. The experience of community and collective creativity we’ve had together has far surpassed anything I imagined. Prior to 100 Poems, I wrote another Substack (first called Corona Cafe, then later called Incurably Human), which began as a weekly newsletter about my experiences with long Covid, intended as a way of offering connection, perspective, and community for others living with the same disease. Over time, the scope broadened to encompass the reality that being human is hard, whether or not you live with a chronic illness. After all, we all live with the chronic reality of our own mortality and fallibility. We all live with loss and with beauty, and the tension between these feels to me like the place of deepest aliveness.

Incurably Human still exists but I rarely find time to post there these days, and I miss it. I loved the practice of paying attention to my life, noticing the little insights or shifts in perspective that were helping me navigate being human, and then sharing those in mini essays.

My plan going forward is to simplify things by having just one Substack, rather than two. Unfortunately, Substack doesn’t allow you to merge two publications, so this will necessitate my backing up all of the data from Incurably Human, then deleting that publication, then adding its archive and subscribers into 100 Poems, at which point I will also change the name of 100 Poems to something better reflective of the journey ahead: Wild Ground. There may be an eventual URL shift thrown into the mix, because apparently I like complicating things. (But don’t worry, I’ll give you that info then.)

Why Wild Ground? Because I don’t know exactly where we’re headed, except that I want to nourish a space in which my creativity can roam wild and free—and in which yours can, too. The terrain beneath our feet keeps changing. (How awful! How gorgeous!) Rather than promising a particular kind of post at a particular frequency until death do us part, I want to simply show up with my full aliveness to the page/screen—and to you—and see what unfurls. My best guess is that, for now, most of my posts (still appearing more or less weekly) will continue to be duos of poem + prompt, but every now and then, I’d like to show up instead with a mini essay on a topic like creativity or writing or being human. Substack has a feature that lets you break your publication up into different types of posts, and subscribers can opt out of a particular type. So when I get that sorted, I’ll let you know, so if you’re like oh my gosh, no essays please, only poems (or vice versa), you’ll have the option to make that happen.

In the meantime, if you’re already a 100 Poems subscriber, you don’t need to do a thing. When the publication name changes to Wild Ground, you’ll still receive the posts just like you do now. Paid subscriptions will also carry forward as is. And because I don’t think it’s possible to say this too many times, thank you so much to my dear, darling paid subscribers. Money can feel like a lot of things, not all of them good, but in this case, it feels like a hug. Like a hug and groceries, which are both so deeply appreciated. If you find yourself with hugs/groceries/cash to spare and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can do so through the button below, and the fact that there is no reason on earth why you need to do so (literally zero extra perks) is precisely the reason I gasp with gratitude and awe anytime someone opts to take that route.

Thank you all so much for being here! I look forward to our journey together, into/onto Wild Ground.