I am finding new rooms in the house of my voice while I write with Jindu. When I respond to something in one of his poems or something he has said, and then weave it into the sense and the sound of my next poem, the writing gets electric and lively in ways I can’t often set myself up for when I write simply for myself.
Heron Feather
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
On my altar are bones and
a blue heron’s feather a shard
of broken pottery a snake skin
five seeds three pennies and a
statue of an ancient goddess
I made from clay some milkweed
fluff a pen I love to write with and
a paintbrush tools of the trade
some sea shells and a stone
from the path to my house
in the village where I was born.
Some of this is a lie but all
of it is true and when I die
you may keep all my lies
but put the stone into my
left shoe so I will know
where to go and put the heron
feather in in my hand so I can
fly there but don’t make plans
for a long time yet I have lots
of magic yet to make I think
this is what it really means
to be alive.
Gratitudes:
1. Glad we decided to go to virtual learning when we did. My son and I were sent home early today because we were exposed. I’m grateful that my school takes tracing seriously. I hope I can get a test tomorrow.
2. My students are such tender and sweet-hearted folx. I’m going to miss seeing them in person, but I look forward to seeing their whole faces for a while on Zoom.
3. Writing with Jindu. I am learning so much about poetry from writing with someone with such a rich sense of craft and word-work. It is such an honor.
4. Wordplay and artplay
5. Lancaster’s ExtraGive. Every year my town has a day of giving, and people give to their favorite charities, together, and every year it raises more money for people do to good in the world. It gives me hope.
Stay safe, Beloveds!
“…when women speak truly they speak subversively–they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert.
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.
That’s what I want–to hear you erupting. You young Mount St. Helenses who don’t know the power in you–I want to hear you.” —Ursula Le Guin
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” —Muriel Rukeyser
“Oh to meet, however briefly, the greatness that lives under our surface. To summon enough bravery to be without armour and strategy, for the chance at meeting that irreducible power. Oh to make of our terrified hearts a prayer of surrender to the God of Love; that we remain safe in our quivering ache to be near that Otherness, even for a moment. To touch that ancient life who will never relinquish its wilderness, who lets instinct make its choices, whose knowing lives in bones and whose song is a wayfinder.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.”
―Parker J. Palmer
“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
―Emily Dickinson
“One of my favourite teachings by Martín Prechtel is that ‘violence is an inability with grief.’ In other words, it takes skillfulness to grieve well, to grieve wholeheartedly. It requires us to bravely, nakedly come to face all that is lost, keeping our hearts open to loving just as fully again.
“When we make war, lashing out in rage and revenge, it is because we are unwilling to make this full encounter with grief. It is easy to enact the same violence which has taken so much from us―including towards ourselves―but the greater work is to let that which is missing enlarge your life; to make beauty from your brokenness.
“Whatever you hold in the cauldron of your intention is your offering to the divine. The quality of assistance you can generate and receive from the Holy is governed by the quality of your inner offering. When you indulge in fear and doubt, you are flooding the arena where love is attempting to work.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“Our true home is in the present moment.
To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green Earth
in the present moment.”
―Thich Nhat Hanh
“An awake heart
is like a sky that pours light.” ―Hafiz (Ladinsky)
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ―Oscar Levant
Mockingbird Chronicles 