Thank You For Your Attention

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Thank You for Your Attention to This Matter
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Thank you for your attention to this matter
this one right over here
no don’t look that way
attend please to this particular matter
to which I am currently bringing your attention
so that you are looking away
when I am over here
putting my hand in the cookie jar
taking away your money
and your health insurance
to give to my billionaire buddies
who bought me this gig

Thank you for attending to
this meaningless prattle
THIS ALL CAPS RANTING
this twittering gabble
while I am busy redacting
my name from these files
which I said did not exist
but which do unfortunately exist
and in which my name
may or may not appear once or twice
or hundreds of times

Thank you for your attention
which I will direct here
to these people I hate and I want you to hate
to these I call garbage and piggies
to these stupid women these
stupid humans doing their
stupid human tricks
so you will not look
at my bigotry
at how stupid
I am becoming
how wit-addled
at how my incompetence
daily compounds

Wait. You don’t agree with me
about the immigrants?
Then attend here to my tariffs
the greatest tariffs I tell you
for your own good
your attention please
look over here
so you do not see
boats exploding in the ocean
men in the water clinging to debris
just before your military drones
rain death upon them

Attention
Attention
Thank you
for your attention
to this matter

Last Day of Poem-a-Day

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here is the last daily poem of November. Every year I think I get a little stronger. This year I’m less desperate for the month to end, more confident in what I’ve written.

Morning Meditation
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Let today be what it wants to be
Let tomorrow be a seed you store
in the intricately carved box of your heart
Let yesterday be the distant sound
of a train whistle in the dawn

Sit in your quiet place
Hear the rustling voices of yesterday
Feel the growing light of tomorrow
on your open palms, on your closed eyelids
Breathe in the memory of what was,
and the awareness of what will be

Then put on this moment
like a warm sweater handmade
in a joyful collaboration
between your grandparents
and the grandchildren
of everyone you’ve ever
shown kindness to
and know that you belong
to this moment.

Gratitude List:
1. This moment
2. That moment that was
3. The moment that will be
4. The ancestors
5. Those who are to come
May we walk in Beauty!

Sunny November Day

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I posted yesterday’s poem in a rush, just on IG and FB. Here is today’s.

Sunny November Day
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

time winds through
this fine afternoon
the shine of sun
dismissing the gray
of days of dark and rain
the line of trees on the ridge
quietly stark in their
autumn nakedness
making lines of shadow
rows of tree-selves cloned
sliding down the hillside
marking the memory
of themselves marching
through time’s steady
and inexorable unwinding

Gratitude List:
1. Ugali-making (and eating) with the fam
2. Sunshine in November
3. Laughing with people
4. Being in a body–sensory experience
5. Being unsettled–it moves me forward, won’t let me get too arrogant in my positioning
May we walk in Beauty!

Haiku

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Moon Haiku

by Beth Weaver-Kreider

the boat of the moon
riding above the ridgeline
shadows on my road

Gratitude List:

  1. That moon
  2. Lobster tail for supper
  3. People who make me laugh
  4. Dreams
  5. The Wrightsville Bridge

May we walk in Beauty!

Funny, Isn’t It?

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Sometimes it takes a lot of reworking and re-arranging, and cutting up phrases to fit to other phrases. This one was almost too easy. I like how it fell together, so I am not going to tug and pull at it for a few more days. I think it’s done. Great Gratitude to all the Facebook Friends who submitted phrases!

Funny, Isn’t It?
a Facebook Crowd-sourced Poem
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

We had been in camp for three months.
In the very middle of the front row,
his bony hands clasped in front of him:
“That’s why everyone hates each other nowadays—
I guess poor guys dont get kissed on the lips.”
My stomach drops at the muffled sound of glass breaking.
Since when do men care about such things?
This is a dangerous time for you.

We have to confront each of our shadow aspects.
I was in the habit of considering that etheric
little bone defying the course of the waters,
but the crucial bit of magic was to keep your focus
on every angle of a question.
I had decided to build and not destroy,
start with the strongest sensation.
I didn’t expect it to look so wild.

Learn from those far away and long ago.
In many spiritual traditions, sin does not exist.
A nation where you can’t ask questions
is one that is going downhill.
Atonement is unnecessary, since dreams
bring guidance from the well of Being.
Firebrands ask questions,
and I would say she is everything.
Her job took on a new shimmering significance.
Funny, isn’t it? How it all comes around.

Sources:
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Dream Count.
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-time Indian.
Barbery. Muriel. The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Callahan, Patti. Once Upon a Wardrobe.
Genet, Katherine . The Gathering.
Haig, Matt. The Life Impossible.
Haig, Matt. The Midnight Library.
Harpman, Jaqueline . I Who Have Never Known Men.
Helminski, Camille Hamilton Adams. The Way of Mary.
King, Karen L. The Gospel of Mary of Magdala.
Kinney, Wallis. A Dark and Secret Magic.
Klein, Gerda Weissman. All but My Life.
Lee, Min Jin. Pachinko.
Menakem, Resmaa. My Grandmother’s Hands.
Myss, Caroline. Sacred Contracts.
Patchett, Ann. Tom Lake.
Quinn, Kate. The Briar Club
Reichel, Hanna. For Such a Time As This: An Emergency Devotional
Rowling, JK. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Shaw, Martin. Scatterlings.
Winspear, Jacqueline. The Comfort of Ghosts.

Gratitude List:
1. Playing with words
2. Being on Break!
3. How hard the guitarists and singer worked this morning to prepare for their performance at Grandfriends’ Day
4. Getting things done (this is a recurring gratitude for me–I think it’s about my tendency to procrastinate, so it feels especially soul-cleansing to have a list of things I have accomplished.)
5. Anticipating time with Beloveds
May we walk in Beauty!

Pile Up

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Today, I am trying my hand at a skinny, a poetic form crafted by Truth Thomas. Eleven lines. Lines one and eleven are any length, using all the same words (11 usually is a scramble of 1). All the other lines are one word each, and lines 2, 6, and 10 are the same word. I started this one, thinking it would take the startling turn of my mother’s original phrasing, but it got a little defiantly dark at the end.

Pile Up
a skinny by Beth Weaver-Kreider
“Some days just pile up with good things.” —my mother

Some days just pile up with good things
even
when
it’s
gray
even
when
the
sun
even
with good days some things just pile up

Gratitudes:
1. Break begins tomorrow
2. This little set of Advent candles
3. Drinking water from my mother’s barley ware
4. When I read a poem that seems to be meant for my moment
5. Big warm sweaters
May we walk in Beauty!

Doorway Between What Was & What Will Be

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For tonight’s poem, I asked randomwordgenerator.com to give me six words. Here they are: memorial, pin, pause, sight, patient, snuggle. The rule is to use all six in a poem.

Doorway Between What Was & What Will Be
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Yes, I will be patient
although I am ready
and more than ready
to pin down the echo
to leap the chasm
I’ll pause with the dream
only just out of sight
to snuggle the ghost
of the past before I race
to make a memorial
of the ashes and dust
of what once was

Gratitude List:
1. Carli’s piano music this morning
2. Sunshine!
3. Reading tarot for thoughtful and wise women
4. The artfulness of paper wasps
5. That coconut and chocolate cookie
May we walk in Beauty!

Found Tanka

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When I feel my brain turning off, and I still have a poem to write, I decide I’ll go experimental and pull a found poem out of a magazine.

Found Tanka
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
(found in Oct 2025 Anabaptist World)

people went dancing
we stayed home, riveted by
borrowed refusals
honoring evolving lives
to radical transitions

Gratitude List:
1. Grades are submitted for the first Trimester! And it isn’t even 2 am the night before they’re due!
2. Warm shower on a chilly night
3. Anticipating the elder child coming home for the holiday
4. Book Club–such fine, wise women
5. I’m sleeping really well lately. Maybe it’s because it’s new moon
May we walk in Beauty!

November Haiku Triptych

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November Haiku Triptych
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Sometimes in the gray
box of November a door
lets in a small light

Sometimes the small light
of November makes a space
for another breath

Sometimes a quick breath
in November makes me feel
like I just might make it through

Gratitude List:
1. Lancaster’s ExtraGive
2. The team from church who created the Trans Day of Remembrance Vigil last night
3. Friday
4. Healing stories
5. Making things
May we walk in Beauty!

Riot Piggy

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Piggy Riot
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Quiet Piggy
Sit down Piggy
I do not permit
a Piggy to speak
Piggies should be seen
and not heard
Shake it Piggy
Bake me a cake Piggy

Awaken Piggy
Make a break
for it Piggy
Stand up Piggy
Speak out Piggy
Sing Piggy
Riot Piggy

Today instead of a gratitude list, I want to mark Trans Day of Remembrance, begun in 1999 by trans activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith to commemorate the murder the previous year of Black trans performer Rita Hester.

  • In the past three years, our community in Lancaster area has lost at least five young trans people to suicide.
  • Proportionally, more trans people lose their lives to violence than just about any other group in the US.
  • What can you do to create safe and brave spaces where everyone is completely free to be themselves and live their truth?