Ground Reaction Force

We have new subscribers! Welcome! I suspect most of you came to 100 Poems through Maya Popa’s recent post, in which she included one of my recent poems, “Voyeurism.” I’m so grateful to her and so glad you’re here. One thing that makes this Substack a little different from most poetry Substacks is that each post (two per week) includes not only an original poem but also a prompt. The comments thread is where the real fun happens, though (and it’s the reason you’ll often hear me saying “we” rather than “I” in reference to 100 Poems). There you’ll find a big-hearted community of fellow subscribers, who share their own poems (usually inspired by the prompt, but that’s not a requirement) and who respond with generosity and insight to one another’s writing. It would tickle me pink if a few of you newbies would join us there!

Now on to the poem for today . . . I wrote this one about a month ago, before the snow was replaced by thick clumps of grass, by trout lilies, dandelions, and spring beauties. I know a few of you still have snow crunching beneath your feet, so I figured I’d share this before the thaw.

Ground Reaction Force

The air is crisp, and 
the ground is crisper,
snow crunching beneath my boots and
leaves crunching beneath the snow. 

I remember my amazement 
when I first learned that
the ground presses back
against the pressure of feet. 

I often think what
sweet support, Earth
boosting us, like a mother
boosts a child, warm
smile, gentle hands, and
here you go.

But then again,
maybe she’s only
trying to
push us
off her face. 

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

The Prompt

Today’s prompt, reduced to pith, is . . . Let’s get physical! (I almost included a link to Olivia Newton John’s music video after typing those words, but then I watched it, and wow. I’m still deciding how to feel.)

The poem I shared above was inspired by the feeling of my feet pressing against the ground as I walked—but also by Newton’s Third Law, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you’d like a prompt to play with, then I encourage you to pick a law of physics, and ponder it . . . or test it (safely, please) . . . or wield it as a metaphor. If you’re a non-scientist like me, you might want to pick something relatively simple like, say, gravity, or one of Newton’s laws of motion. You smarty-pants types are welcome to leap into the quantum realm, even if your poems are likely to send my head spinning off its axis.

It is always such a gift and treat to read your poems in the comments thread. I look forward to seeing you there!