2025 April PAD Challenge: Day 18

For today's prompt, write a response poem. In many ways, every poem is a response poem as it's a response to something, even if it's that hard-to-explain sense of inspiration many poets feel. For the purposes of this prompt, your poem could respond to a story in the news (or just a fictional story, for that matter), a conversation you overheard in public (also called eavesdropping), or another poem (written by you or another poet).

Of course, this is where I need to remind everyone to poem respectfully with each other.

Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.

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Write a poem every single day of the year with Robert Lee Brewer's Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming. After sharing more than a thousand prompts and prompting thousands of poems for more than a decade, Brewer picked 365 of his favorite poetry prompts here.

Click to continue.

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“Regarding the World,” by Robert Lee Brewer

Every day, it feels, there is something new
to provoke consternation and outrage,
and yet, I also find myself staring
out my window at the birds and the bees,
at deer crossing hesitantly before
bounding across the street full of courage,
and yes, I still feel my outrage daring
me to speak up, double-dog daring me
to forgo peace for giving voice to truth,
because it's true some truths can't be ignored,
and I know there is no one perfect way
to both stir the heart and then save the day,
but we need to live and love and believe
in the beauty of a world in relief.