Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Deadnettle

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment


This one is perhaps too didactic, too prosey. I think I’ll try again to do another poem about the deadnettle as the teacher. This will stand for today, however.

The Fool stands long and silently
upon the flagstones before knocking.
She raises her hand to the knocker
and listens, as though afraid to fill
the vast and thoughtful silence.

Before she can raise the iron ring,
the door opens quietly inward.
An ancient one stands within,
welcoming the Fool with a gesture
and eyes that bid her enter.

Settling on the parlor couch
which the Teacher prepares tea,
the Fool spreads her belongings:
a notebook, a fuzzy pink hat,
and a book of angry poems.

“I need you to teach me how
to start a revolution,” she begs.
The old one raises a bushy eyebrow
and turns to the window,
gesturing out to a spring field,
purple with deadnettle, henbit,
and Gill-over-the-ground.

“There,” says the old one,
“is your revolution. Bloom.
Be medicine, for the earth
and medicine for the people.
Draw out the toxins from your soil.
Spread beauty, and beauty will spread.
Though you know you are for the plow,
bloom anyway, and prepare
to nourish the soil when you go under.”

TOMORROW’S PROMPT:
Tomorrow the Fool encounters the balance of the Lovers. Animus and Anima find each other and sense the ideal of their union. The secret inner self makes itself known, and she finds that what she has been running from is what she has been most longing for. Desire, attraction, the aching need to belong, to be understood, to be complete–all belong to the realm of the Lovers. Tomorrow, the Fool encounters the Lovers.

Gratitude List:
1. Another osprey, this morning.
2. Green
3. Weekend
4. Watching Babe with the kids.
5. A traveling day tomorrow.

May we walk in Beauty!

Let Us Waft. Let Us Be Wanton.

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment


Message from the Empress
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

In the orchard over the ridge
the trees have broken into a riot of pink,
lascivious against the rain-wet grass beneath.

Let us riot too.
Let us spread
our blooming fingers to the sky,
opening our mouths and our hearts,
meeting destruction with bloom,
with green, with simple beauty,
with overpowering fragrance.

Let us waft.
Let us be wanton.

TOMORROW’S PROMPT
The Fool still has more mentors to meet. Tomorrow she encounters the Teacher, or Hierophant. Teachers who know their jobs are compassionate facilitators of learning, nurturing the curiosity of their students, drawing out their students’ own ideas and perspectives, providing spaces for the Aha! Teachers who don’t know their jobs are judgey and demanding, offering shame and guilt instead of encouraging a desire to learn for learning’s sake. Unlike the High Priestess who guards the Mysteries from those who are not prepared to learn (until they are ready), the Teacher entices the seekers into the realm of Knowledge.

Gratitude List:
1. I still can’t quite believe last night’s spectacle. It was heart-pounding and nerve-wracking, but I am grateful I got to see it. While I was watching Ellis’s baseball practice, I heard a screeching in the sky–a bald eagle was chasing an osprey. It went after it for quite a while before it gave up the chase.
2. Turkey feather
3. Mama goose so persistent on her nest despite the storms
4. I love being part of a school where the culture is one of giving to the community and to the world. Students WANT to get involved in projects to help out other humans.  I love these young people.
5. Tomorrow is an easy-plan day. I need a light day.

May we walk in Beauty!

Will

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

final.jpeg

I will.

That should fill
the task list of the day.
Just say,
“I will.”

Then make that happen.
Make your will into a thing
Let it sing.
Give it ground.

Cast your boundaries around you:
east and south and west and north.
Go forth
and do your will.

TOMORROW’S PROMPT:
If we follow the patterns set out for the Fool, she usually meets the Empress before encountering the Emperor. Perhaps my own Fool’s journey took let the Subconscious take the wheel on that one–I have so many poems to edit and revise and work up that it will be more than a summer’s work to get them into workable order for publication. I need the Emperor’s good structure and boundaries. So tomorrow, let’s invoke his soul-mate the Empress: fecund and fertile, nurturing and warm, she supports the Fool’s creative nature, offers the soil and sustenance to build and make.  She embodies the archetype of the mother: fertile, nurturing, supportive, and happily creative. Tomorrow’s poem will be in her realm.

I am taking these prompts very deliberately this season, to be not only the spark of poems, but to take me deeper into contemplation, to gauge and assess where I am on my own Fool’s Journey, to look for the challengers and the allies, and those who fill both roles at once.

Gratitude List:
1. Cool breezes in the the classroom window.
2. Laughter. It’s sort of like a cool breeze coming in the window.
3. The wisdom and contemplation of poetry.
4. Rainbows
5. When they “get” it. There are some days when I feel as though I am beating my head against a wall to get some new concept across. Sometimes, even in a different class on the same day, everyone seems to get it, like I have opened a line from me to them, and they just absorb the new material like sponges. Today, with the very dry subject of citing sources in MLA 8 style, for instance.

May we walk in Wisdom and Beauty!

A Truth Once Known

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

I fear this may be a little disjointed, perhaps two poems in one. I wanted to bring in some of the symbols of the priestesses who offer me challenge and invitation: Mary Magdalene, Eve, Hildegard of Bingen, Marie Laveau.


Meeting the High Priestess

How do you enter? How will you come?
Will you pass through the gates in perfect love and perfect trust?
Will you push back the veil of your own free will?
Do you have clean hands and a pure heart?

Contemplate roundness: circle and arc and sphere.
She holds out the apple, the egg and the skull,
the pregnant belly of the moon,
the round face of the grail,
the spiraling ends of the scroll,
the coiling round of the python.

Speak your Truth, and enter, and the Mysteries will be revealed.
Will the Truth set you free, or will it bind you,
with your dawning knowledge, to responsibility?

For ignorance is no longer bliss,
and a Truth once known
cannot be unknown again.

TOMORROW’S PROMPT: The Fool, still heady with the mysteries of today, will meet the Emperor tomorrow. Will he be a challenger or an ally? Or both, perhaps. The Emperor makes the laws, sets the boundaries, holds you accountable. He can be willful and demanding, tyrannical when he is unevolved. But when he is truly doing his work, he creates a balance and a structure within which the Fool can experience a sense of safety. He’s the Apollo to your Dionysus, the Roman to your Greek, the outline to your ramble. What poem will you make of him or his laws and boundaries?

Gratitude List:
1. Dead nettle. Have I mentioned dead nettles lately? Fields of purple glisten in the morning dew.
2. Glory clouds on the way home from work, sunrays streaming down. Clouds. All Clouds.
3. Fried egg on toast.
4. Sun on rain-wet leaves in the woods.
5. A pair of Canada geese have chosen to make the pond their home for now. They have created an artful nest at the edge of the pond, and Mama is sitting on it.

May we walk in Beauty!

Seeking Mystery

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments


The Mysteries of Mary Magdalene, painted by Andrea Solario, Piero do Cosimo, Domenico Fetti

I have been pondering the first and last lines of my Magician poem all day, and thought I might try to make something patterned and structured and rhymed, but the day has gotten away from me, and free verse is easier for the riff. It means that I do not often try my hand at more challenging forms during April and November, because I am caught up in the dailiness of school and grading. I’ll have to give myself some formal poem assignments for the summer.

Listen to the wisdom of the sage.
“What is language, but a kind of magic?
Here am I, in my own organism, my tower of Self,
and you there in your own lonely keep,
and how shall we bridge the gap between us
but by language? These webs of sound
we string together, we cast them through sky,
drawing out threads of meaning,
as with a wand, fiery threads of sense.

“We build this bridge on air,
scratch symbols on a page with feathers,
and stories flow like water between us,
borne on gossamer strands
of word on word on word.
We manage and tend our loneliness
by weaving cloths of language.
How can we find each other in the shadow
but for the flow of speech we offer
and the magic of these words upon the page?

TOMORROW’S PROMPT (April 4):
Today the Fool met the Magician, a mentor who taught her something of the nature of illusion and magic, of her power to work with the elements of earth and air and water and fire. Tomorrow, she will meet another mentor: The High Priestess, who will invite her to learn of the Mysteries. Perhaps this is Mary Magdalene, contemplating the skull, or offering the grail, or reading her book. The priestess is the keeper of the doorway of the most sacred of the mysteries, and so she is a challenger as well as a mentor. The Fool must prove herself before she enters the realm of the priestess. Tomorrow’s poem will be about Mystery.

Gratitude List:
1. Refried Beans. Such a basic comfort food. Add salsa, hot sauce, and a little sour cream, and it’s a delightful bean porridge for a chilly night.
2. Feedback. Sometimes it just nice to know what other people think. Not to validate, but to get a sense of whether people perceive me as I perceive myself.
3. Thoughtful guidelines for living more deliberately and authentically with our technology. That was a good chapel this morning.
4. How language links us.
5. Seeking wonder and awe. Preserving the mystery.

May we walk in Beauty!

Meeting the Mage

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Into the Woods

Sometimes you can’t see the trees for the forest.
You miss the sweep of oak, the broad arms of maple,
the proud rise of locust and poplar and pine,
because the understory closes in around you.
The briars catch and grab, the poison twists
and wanders everywhere into your pathway.

Sometimes you miss the healing tang of rose hips
there in the green tangle before you
because you’re fretting about the thorns,
licking the blood from torn and tattered fingers.
You miss the berries swelling in the brambles
as you reach to free yourself from their grasp.

But some days, when the path is muddy
and you’ve slipped for the thousandth time
back down the slippery hill trail,
your eyes will catch the bright blue
of a feather in wet leaves,
or the sparkle of a shining stone
there where your hand has reached
to push you back to your feet.

TOMORROW’S PROMPT:
Little Red had her Wolf, Snow White had her Dwarfs, and Goldilocks had her family of Bears. When the Fool enters the Wood, the first person she encounters is the Magician (the Mage, the Shaman, the Adept, the Witch). This is someone with a great deal of skill in the manipulation of the elements, someone who can make you see what you think you want to see, a creator of illusion. The Fool encounters Magic in tomorrow’s poem. My poem will be about Magic or the Magician, or the Elements, or changing consciousness at will. Will you join me?

Gratitude List:
1. Getting it done. Plugging. Deciding what I can do and can’t do, and making it work.
2. The haven of my parents’ house for grading in silence, distraction-free.
3. Music and words. Reflection and contemplation.
4. Black-out poetry–my sixth-grader is doing some for homework, and it’s lovely.
5. All the elements.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Way of the Fool

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Ah, yes. Here on the first day of April, I spent the day with eight-year-olds, and am soon off to another birthday celebration with Grandma. Ah, the life of the Fool–planning it ALL in there, even if it seems impossible.

Begin your road at the ending,
as the last pathway rounds the bend.
Dance to the lip of the chasm–
place your foot upon a bridge of rainbow.
Keep your eyes upon the distant wood,
your ears tuned to the song of undine and dryad.

Remember, your road is a circle,
and everywhere you are is the start of your journey.
Your road is of water, of vision, of air,
of heartbeat, illusion, and wisdom
a pathway of fire and smoke.

Feel how the sky under your feet holds you up,
how the earth at your back is made only of dreams,
how the only way forward is light and color,
how a distant harping draws you onward.

Tomorrow’s Prompt: Let’s just keep going down the Fool’s Road, shall we? After she embarks on her Rainbow Road, the Fool enters the Enchanted Wood, where she meets a complex cast of characters, meets a variety of challenges, and develops her skills and knowledge. Today, let’s take her Into The Woods. Take a fairy tale turn or a psychological turn. Be whimsical or wise–or both: that’s the Fool for you.  My April 2 poem goes Into The Woods.

Gratitude List:
1. The world of the Fool. Stepping off the edge of the chasm into the void. Trusting the bridge.
2. The energy of eight-year-olds. Fun, playful, eager.
3. Moss and ferns in the woods. Green, green moss.
4. The play of sun through clouds.
5. Pink trees

May we walk in Beauty!

Fools Poem

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

 

Parable of the Rich Fool, Rembrandt (This one is new to me.)

Tomorrow is April Fools Day, which means it is also the first day of National Poetry Month. It’s a Fool’s Journey, the decision to write a poem every day for a month, even when things are feeling tight and busy. Still, it would be foolish to give up the writing and the striving to write just because my life is busy. So here’s to the new month. I am diving in! I will be creating my own prompts this month. Feel free to join me! You can post your poems in the comments section, if you like, or email me your endeavors at 4goldfinches@gmail.com, if you want to share.

  
Polikushka’s Despair, from Tolstoy’s “Ivan the Fool,” and “King Lear and the Fool in the Storm” by William Dyce

For an April First Poem, write about the Fool. Consider your own fool’s journey, your own madcap dance on the edge of the cliffs, throwing caution to the winds. I once wrote an acrostic poem about the fool, using the words DANCING ON THE CLIFF’S EDGE for the first letter of each line. Fool that I am, I seem to have misplaced it, let it flutter off into the past.

  
The Fool on the Hill in the Bisti Badlands, by John Fowler; The Fool from the Rider Waite Tarot Deck, by  Pamela Colman Smith–the image of the Fool archetype. 

Gratitude List:
1. Things come together. Things get done. Sleep gets slept.
2. This man who is decorating a birthday cake for a boy’s birthday party tomorrow.
3. Rain. Then it stops. (Hoping for a clear day tomorrow–I don’t want a houseful of small boys.)
4. Shining eyes
5. Pablo Neruda

May we walk in Beauty!

Eight Candles

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment


Gratitude List:
1. People who cry when they read the sad parts in books. I am thinking of a particular student wiping her eyes as she finished the last pages of her most recent book.
2. Cherry blossoms
3. The tight fists of buds in the Flinchbaugh orchards. Some tiny blooms, too.
4. This parenting gig. Birthdays remind me how precious it all is, and how fleeting.
5. People are still talking about the Senior Presentations. During Tuesday’s final group, the rooms were packed, the energy was high, and the support was evident. People were pronouncing blessings on their fledglings. I love to hear students speak of how much they appreciate their teachers–it gives me a new and deeper appreciation (already deep) for my colleagues.

May we walk in Beauty. May we shower each other with Blessings.

Goodbye, Baby

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment


“Six days until my birthday!”
“It’s three days until my birthday!”
And today: “Do you know what tomorrow is?” he asks me, dancing about the room.

And each time, especially as the day nears, I can almost feel myself once again that strange sea creature of late pregnancy, stranded on land, awkward, ungainly, tethered to gravity. Eight years ago right now, I was in the early stages of labor, determined that this one was going to work in the natural way. By morning, we decided that it was time for another caesarean section, and Josiah Pearse came into the world.

I did love pregnancy and the baby years, but I also felt like I never quite lost that gravity, that awkwardness, as long as I was toting tiny people around, anxious and sleep-deprived. Today, I feel like (except for the fighting and territoriality between the two) we’re entering a sort of sweet spot in the family years. Still, reaching eight feels like a particular farewell to babyhood, and I can almost feel the transformation in this exact moment of the year-change. He seems taller, more big-kid, more angular than ever. His teeth seem to be too big for his face and his elbows and knees stick out all over the place. This happens every spring, but this year it seems particularly acute and poignant.

Goodbye, Baby.

Gratitude List:
1. My obsessions run deep. Last night I dreamed that oriole had returned.
2. Robin singing his rain song, announcing that he belongs to the family of thrush.
3. Purple carpets of dead nettles in the field. And carpets of foamy blue speedwell.
4. The dawn, and a just-budding tree against the dawn, and a watchful hawk on a branch of the tree.
5. That thumbnail of a new moon.

May we walk in Beauty!