Such a wind. Such a wild, wild wind. Corn husks spiraling down out of the sky, leaves rising in my rearview mirror like something out of a German luxury car ad, that move-along shove from behind as you walk from the house to your car.
A devil-may-care wind, a witches-are-passing wind, a scouring, powerful rowdy wind, the kind that could blow down the towers of injustice, pull kings from their thrones, and lay waste the structures built of lies. No house of cards can stand in the face of that wind.
Gratitude List: 1. The softness of milkweed fluff 2. The view from my parents’ new apartment 3. Rest 4. Smoothie for supper 5. Reminders to seek joy May we walk in Beauty!
Hiking the Chestnut Grove Trails by Beth Weaver-Kreider
It is both disconcerting and charming, the soft grassy pathways disarming the sense of disquiet, the riot of goldenrod, foxtail, and milkweed, native plants seeded along the human-formed hillsides
the wide expanse of grasses, ponds, brambles, and shrubs with scrubby trees and a diverse plantation of oaks. The smoke from farm and industry jar the view, but here too you can see the River, and an eagle gliding,
riding the thermals along the opposite ridge, can see almost as far as the bridge, and down to the dam, more emblems of how humans have transformed the landscape, bearing witness to hundreds of years
of human interference, how it all settles uneasily into these spaces of wildness and cultivation.
Gratitude List: 1. Good brisk walking on the hobbitiest of trails 2. The Susquehanna River 3. So many varieties of oak! 4. Time with a friend who understands my language 5. Cheese on toast May we walk in Beauty!
My friend Mara has challenged her online community to write a sonnet on the 14th day of the month. I will definitely try my hand at something more traditional some month, but today I was feeling experimental, and I read an interesting abecedarian today, so I thought: Half of 26 letters in the alphabet is 13, and if I emphasize the last two letters by giving them their own lines, then I’ll have the 14 lines necessary for a sonnet. Read across? Read down? Read on a downward zigzag? You choose the pathway.
Gratitude List: 1. Weekend–my energy for the work week was definitely flagging 2. A good long walk (on the treadmill, because darkness and cold) 3. One of my colleagues complimented my sweater today by saying I was rocking the 80s vibe, and I feel Seen. 4. Water–nothing like a cold drink of water when you’re tired 5. Experimentation and wordplay May we walk in Beauty!
He’s sure working hard to suppress the evidence of his presumed innocence.
What possible reason could there be, if he is guilt-free, to keep it hidden?
He’s bidden his stooges to silence, riding his sycophants for their loyalty,
expecting to be treated like royalty, trusting his privilege to keep him free
from the consequences of accountability. But the truth is circling ever closer
and he knows although he won’t admit that every century is lit up with the fires
of dictators and strongmen, tyrants and would-be kings spiralling down
to their inevitable ends, their deeds laid bare in the glare of a new-risen sun.
Gratitude List: 1. Re-establishing helpful practices, like making gratitude lists 2. The crescent moon in the sycamore tree 3. Soup 4. Tea 5. Big warm sweaters May we walk in Beauty!
I crossed the border into the Republic of Heretics, and discovered a savage and beautiful country.
I handed over my badge, my Confession of Faith, and my halo, removed my uniform, and put on a robe of ragged motley,
took up the pen and the wand, the seed and the bowl, and made my home in the wildlands beyond the hedge.
I ran naked with outcasts through ruined cities, and when trespassers came from the other world
we circled around them, stared into their rabbit eyes, and ran on in our wayward ferality. I had cast off shame
like outworn garments, had no need of the bound ones and their domestic pronouncements.
How I howled when the moon rose over that country. In this place, I can feel my bones, and the blood in the rivers of my body.
The first line of Liz Berry’s “Republic of Motherhood” in the current issue of The Poetry Foundation’s magazine Poetry arrested me, and I couldn’t stop thinking of it. Each new shouldered identity becomes a border crossing, a new country. I often felt like an outsider in The Republic of Motherhood, though it has been a joyful and fulfilling place for me. Still, I have never felt so much belonging as I have since I have taken on the identity of Heretic, and joined the ones who howl at the moon.
As I was working on my poem, I was caught by how quickly the synonyms for wild get very negative–savage, brutal, fiendish–and how the synonyms for tame tend toward blandness. The set which seems to break that mold, and which I want to work with more deeply in the future is unbroken and broken. Wild and unbroken, broken and tame. I like the word ferality. And wildishness.
Gratitude List: 1. Good company 2. YouTube videos that inspire art 3. My very creative and caring colleagues 4. Grace. Let’s all give ourselves a little grace today 5. So many good books to read! May we walk in Beauty!
was i chasing down a startled deer in the dawn or myself i chased
we locked our gazes for a moment or more then he turned and ran
he performed the role of hunted while i became this story’s hunter
how my heart lifted when he disappeared into the corn
Gratitude List: 1. The tang of pomegranate seeds 2. The curve of that wooden bowl from Tanzania 3. The thrill at the first line on a clean page 4. The promise of sleep in a couple hours 5. the satisfaction of a good, deep stretch May we walk in Beauty!
Finding the Way Through the Poem by Beth Weaver-Kreider
All these keys at my fingertips. Which will open the door of the poem? Which combination will turn this moment from a frenzied search through random rooms to a purposeful path through the maze?
Most days, I just begin opening them, door after door. Try this one, then this. Sometimes, I find a rhythm, a pattern to follow, a repetition, a thread of idea.
Or, like now, I feel myself reaching the dead-end of the hallway, time is running out, the patterns are tangling, and I have missed the essential clue.
I’m not looking for a way out. I’m looking for the way through.
Gratitude List: 1. My students. They’re witty, charming, thoughtful, wise, intelligent, brave, resilient. . . I have so much to learn from them. 2. Livestreams from African water holes. 3. I’m trying to keep my glucose levels under control. Today I realized that one savored bite of a Stroopy is actually almost as good as snarfing down a whole one. 4. Feeling more confident in my body. 5. Painting with watercolors. May we walk in Beauty!
I had a nightmare last night. As I have been sitting with the feelings, I keep returning to the fact that what was nightmare for me is reality for so many people today. There will be a reckoning in the after, and people will be called to account for their cruelty, whether dutiful or gleeful. There will be a reckoning.
ICE Dream by Beth Weaver-Kreider
They grabbed her, my oh-so-fierce and oh-so-fragile mother, and threw her to the ground.
Even in the light of day through the sheeting rain, beyond the simple sounds of the day, I hear her cry out.
I cannot stop feeling it, cannot stop hearing the cry, the crunch, cannot stop feeling the helplessness engulf me.
All these traumas we witness daily, the grandfather tackled, the mother taken away, the terrified and weeping children,
they’re all our family, all fierce, all fragile, all endangered by masked and violent men, bent on power and domination.
The cries echo everywhere. The yell, the crunch, the quick abduction. Our elders. Our children, our neighbors.
Perhaps I have not listened keenly enough to the cries, have not held with reverence the line that ties me to the disappeared.
I thought I was paying attention. All I know is that today my heart is shattered, pieces scattered to the winds.
This is the second of my three posts for Way of the Rose for this novena, the walk through the Sorrowful Mysteries, which I call: The Agony in the Garden, The House of Pain, the Village of Shaming, the Grove of Shadows, and the Gates of Life and Death:
In her book Lost Goddesses of Ancient Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths, Colleen Spretnak tells an older version of the Persephone story, one before the northern Zeus worshippers swept south into Greece, before it became a story of abduction and assault, This earlier telling gives the young Persephone (the Kore maiden) agency. Demeter, goddess of the Earth and all things living, is responsible, too, for Death. Her intuitive daughter feels the lost souls of the dead surrounding them, seeking solace, but Demeter knows that her own work is to instruct the mortals to store seed in the Earth that the dead may fertilize the seeds for new growth, and that to do more for the dead will keep her from her other important work. Essentially, she tells her daughter, “tending to the solace of the dead is not my job.”
In this story, Persephone knows in her bones that this will be her work, to tend to the wandering souls of the dead, to offer them comfort and belonging. Although Demeter tries to forbid her, Persephone knows her work, and enters a crevice in the Earth to go deep into the Underworld to care for the souls of the dead. I can see her, full of curiosity, full of adventure, full of the knowledge of her purpose, entering the crevice, traveling the winding passageways to the underworld, perhaps following the Torch-bearer Hecate, Finder of Ways, Keeper of the Keys.
Today we overlay the Sorrowful Mysteries on this Mystery of the Scourging (the House of Pain), and I listen not only for the purposeful footfall of the young woman who takes her destiny upon herself, but for the wild keening of the mother, lost in her own shadowy labyrinth of grieving. And I watch my own children embark on their young adulthood, and I wonder if I am strong enough to let them go on their own underworld journeys, to seek their purpose away from me and my influence. Of course I want them to find their own way, to succeed, to be their own people, but the letting go demands that I grieve, too, like Demeter. And it is a comfort to know that Persephone (who is known as both death-bringer and light-bringer) is single-minded, purposeful in her pursuit of her life’s work. I know that when eventually she brings death for me and my beloveds, she will come trailing light, with an invitation to adventure.
Practice (this is a version of my Heart’s Desire Prayer for this novena). I have assigned each of the five stages of this journey to an animal or bird that has made itself known to me in recent weeks. You can, of course, choose your own:
Lady, take me Deep, Let me tumble through the cave-mouth into your realm of shadow and transformation.
Follow Kore into the cave, seeking the Land of the Dead (I see her as a young deer) I enter the cavern in wonder, full of curiosity, full of adventure.
Follow Demeter, Queen of the Earth and her harvests, on her search for her disappeared child (mother raven) I listen for the flutter of my longings, for the distant song of my deepest desire.
Follow Hecate, Torchbearer, Way-Finder, Keeper of the Keys, through the labyrinthine caverns (grandmother owl) I step onto the winding pathway, holding my torch and my keys.
Enter the Realm of the Dead, the Circle of Ancestors (I think of serpents) I sit in the firelit circle of Ancestors, and receive their Sapient Council.
Receive the blessing of Persephone, Queen of the Dead (I see a crocodile) I follow the Bringer of Death, Bringer of Light with open heart, quiet mind, dancing feet, and willing hands.
Spell to Tumble the Tower of Patriarchy by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Say: We take back our agency Say: The daughters will be avenged Say: The predators have become prey Say: We predate the predators and we will rise again Say: We stand with the ancestors, the women who died on your fires the women who drowned in your waters the women you thought you had buried deep in the mouth of the Earth the same Earth who loves us the Earth who holds the dead dearly the women you set swinging in air
Say: Our mouths are filling with fire and we will burn it down Say: The water within us is rising and we will flood and we will flood and we will flood Say: We are a tremor, we are an earthquake, and we will shake down the tower of power and domination
Say: We will blow and blow and blow We are hurricane We are tornado We are the wind that they call “The Witches are Passing”
Say: The rosy fingers of Dawn rise above the new horizon Say: The ancient Goddess is returning Say: The new story is beginning
Gratitude List: 1. russet ocher burnt sienna yellow gold orange chestnut walnut 2. How sunlight in autumn opens a door to another world 3. When the poem just comes 4. ReGenAll’s Climate Summit today, knowing that people are doing the good work 5. Finding time to write May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 