Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. Over 15,000 daily subscribers. Over 7,000 archived posts.
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.
__________________
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
Vox Populi 
Walked into the woods
And I become one of them
Now I never leave
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lovely poem, Janice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love my trees! Thanks for the prompt.
one, by one, I pull
them out…and toss them away
a hundred year life
to die in the sun
yanked hard from their acorn roots
just for space for blooms
my Mora clock chimes
encased in striated oak
a gift left to breath
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Leo!
LikeLiked by 1 person