September 2026 Open Write Day 1 of 4: Ritual Cleansing

Mo Daley of Illinois is our host today for the September Open Write Day 1. You can read her full prompt here. She writes:

As fall approaches, I can’t stop thinking about changes and shifts. Of course, the changing colors of Midwestern trees are always inspirational, but something else has been on my mind lately.

I look around and see the land and how I have worked with it and changed it, which leads me to wonder about those who came here before me.

Mo inspires us to consider our surroundings with these questions: How would you describe them? Have they always looked this way? Who was there before you? Perhaps 20, 50, or 100 years ago? How about long before then? Do you know what indigenous tribes were living there hundreds of years ago? You can enter your address in this online tool to inform you.

She inspires us to take a few moments to think about those who came before us, and then as a tribute to those who came before us, to write a poem about the land around us. Of course, my mind flashes back to this time last year, when my brother and I were in the midst of cleaning out a lifetime of a collector’s full collection of so many things we never even knew existed. He and Mom had been going to estate sales for years, collecting everything under the sun for the store they would one day own but never did because the one who knew how to make it happen departed this life before he did. And that’s when we discovered just how much they had accumulated……

Ritual Cleansing of 322 Magnolia and 7 Associated Storage Rooms