Every time I am given the writing prompt to write about a place, I go to a singular time in my youth, to a river near my home where a huge willow grown into the riverbank had been cut down after a storm first broke it in two. The stump hung out over the river, the water flowing around and through some of its roots. I would climb up the giant stump and have enough room to sit cross-legged with my bag beside me. I would read, write in my journal, just sit and watch the river loll by, lose all sense of time and place. Now we would call this meditation of a sort, though I didn’t have that word for it as a child. I just knew it was a place I could go to be alone, no matter the season. A place where I could calm my mind and walk away with a feeling of deep inner peace.

willow stump
river slowly swirling
beneath us

 

[Prompt 5: Write a poem about a specific location that meant a lot to you as a child or teenager that you have not returned to in many years. It could be a house, a park, a country, anywhere that had particular significance. The focus of the poem could be on the location itself, or it could be on something(s) that happened there, or someone you spent a lot of time with there.]