Jena Schwartz: Writing Prompt #5 | One Little Acorn

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

A little acorn, a mighty oak. It’s such a cliché, I know. But all worries and judgment of clichés leave my mind when faced with an actual acorn. Examining it up close, considering its DNA. Same could be said, of course, for hanging out with babies. In my world, paying attention to small things that contain the ingredients of mighty future things is pretty much mind-blowing. 

And yet—back to the acorn itself, on the forest floor. It’s easy to ignore, all those little tops scattered about, leaves crunching underfoot, the turn of seasons something I can take completely for granted in fact. Yes, of course acorns and oaks. Yes, of course babies and the people they’ll become. Yes, of course nature and nurture and the perennial curiosity of that equation when it comes to who we turn out to be and the very world around us. 

In other words, this simple image ignites so many different directions of thought for me, it could offer enough writing material for ten prompts, one hundred, one thousand. But for today, we’ll just choose one. 

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Your Writing Prompt: Write about a little acorn which may not be an acorn at all. Close your eyes for a few minutes before you start moving your pen. Better yet, take a walk and see what small thing catches your eye.  

If you like, you may post your poem in the comments section below.

Here’s a poem of mine that came from this prompt:

Acorn 

When I’m gone
what will they have left?
Ten thousand acorns
covering the ground
where I lived,
seeds everywhere
without a tree in sight.

Copyright 2021 Jena Schwartz