Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Swing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

That’s today’s prompt: swing.  I think I will try a lai with this one.  Nine lines, aabaabaab rhyme scheme, and the a lines are 5 syllables, while the b lines are 2.

I need you to know
how strong you will grow.
This thing
cannot keep you low,
will not stop your flow.
You’ll swing
while the wild winds blow,
you’ll pass to and fro
and sing.

I wanted to write a longer and more in-depth piece to someone, about unconditional love and being deserving of love, but this will hold the place for that, and hopefully say a little of what I want to get across.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Being trusted
2. Trusting
3. Safe places
4. Glory clouds
5. Forsythia, forsythia, forsythia

Take my hand.  May we walk in Beauty.

Science

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

EWK 4 001

The prompt for the day is science.  Today I encouraged my ninth grade poets to break out beyond the sense to simply create interesting connections with words.  That’s what I am doing here.  I decided to embed each line inside syllables that would sound roughly like the word science.  With more time, it could be fun to try to tweak something like this into a more elegant poem.

Silent as a mouse creeping along a fence,
Simple the patterns, but intricate the sense,
Since what’s in the center is often intense,
Sift carefully through all the evidence,
Silt washes away, leaving behind reverence.

Gratitude List:
1. This morning’s sunrise, so intense I almost had to stop the car.
2. Green!  Skunk cabbages in the little creek-hollow along Ducktown Road, the briars beginning to green in the understory of the woods, ferns unfurling, lilies of the valley, chickweed, catnip, myrtle.
3. Pink trees
4. My delightful colleagues
5. The sweet concern of my students for my health.  Yesterday, I put on my Smart Board: “Voice Lost.  If found, please return to Room 206.  Also, bring chocolate.”  One student brought me brownies this morning and a get-well card she had made, with hilarious sayings about chocolate.  Yet another student recommended I take honey and lemon, this time with apple cider vinegar.  And now, my voice is returning.

May we walk in Beauty!

Thoughtful

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I’m not sure I have settled on the title of this poem–and the title is the whole source of the prompt.  I thought I would try to get away with writing something that started to come to me last night as I was trying to fall asleep, and then just tacking a somewhat appropriate adjective on top for the title.  The prompt is to take an adjective and make it the title of the poem, and then write a poem to match.  Since the poem was about the inside of my head, I named it “Thoughtful,” but it seems to be thudding a little.

Some days
this room is filled with monkeys,
grabbing, jabbing, jabbering,
racing from place to place in this space.

There is no room in this room
to think.

But thinking is all this room is meant for.

Some days
the room is empty
except for a quiet stream that runs through it.

***

Sometimes when the room has gone quiet
and I am looking out the window,
I see the little white cat
lying in a patch of bright orange day lilies,
dying among the day lilies.

Sometimes there’s a knock on the door
and a sonogram technician
with kind but guarded eyes says:
“I’ll send the doctor in to talk about the sonogram.”

***

Every day the birds fly through:
the whirr and whistle of the dove’s wings,
the flip and bustle of the chickadees and wrens,
the bluebirds curious and concerned–
and all manner of chitters and chatters and calls.

***

One day, there was nothing
but a table, and on the table
a bowl with crimson glaze
and a pattern of twisting snakes,
an intricately spiraled snail
making its methodical way
round and round the rim.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The pair of red-winged blackbirds who sat in the little walnut tree and watched me gather the yarrow stalks from the perennial bed.  Just before they flew off, he gave us a happy screen-door whistle.  Also, first chipping sparrow I have seen this spring, and a shy little stutter in the chestnut tree.
2. Mockingbird has been around all winter, but he’s just started his irrepressible cacophony of a thousand languages.
3 .Hawk–redtail, maybe?–hovering over a field, about to grab a small thing in the weeds.
4. Grandmother’s wisdom is alive and well in the hearts of teen-aged boys.  I have a bad case of laryngitis.  Two different boys today suggested that I drink honey lemon tea.  Interestingly, they’re from different parts of the world: one from the US and one from Ethiopia.
5. Over supper of sweet potato quesadillas, the cosmological conversation of children:

“I learned something new today at school.  No, actually I made it up.  To God, this land looks soooooo tiny, like this, like a piece of dust.”

I swear we are not teaching them this stuff.

And, in response to that, Other Brother said: “Did you know that at any moment there could be another universe right next to us?”

Honesty / Dishonesty

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

crazies 1

(Sometimes things just appear in the Chromebook photo files.)

Today’s prompt, two for Tuesday, is to write an honest and/or a dishonest poem.  This is something of an experiment.  This is not about anyone I know personally.  She is more of an idea, or an idea of an idea.  I don’t know if I am saying what I mean, or making up a meaning by saying.

I knew a woman
honest as the rain,
honest as the bluest sky,
whose hands opened and closed
like petals in the sun.

And we were all afraid of her,
of the scorch and the soak of her,
the blinding goodness of her.

We all harbored our demons in secret,
nourished them in those secret rooms
under the quiet earth,
deep in our shadowselves.

And still she came seeking us,
always revealing us,
breaking down the doors of us.

‘Til there was nothing but blue sky,
rain in the mornings,
and her hands, closing and opening.

And we were no more.

Gratitude List:
1. My voice.  I have lost it at the moment, and am suddenly grateful for the gift of speech.
2. People who try to understand others in a situation rather than try to establish their rights in the situation.
3. The green and reddish frosting on the woods that cover the hills by the River.
4. How sounds carry meaning.  I am grateful for the way this job of teaching English keeps me always aware of language, of sound and meaning.
5. Jamming on the violin with Ellis on the cello.  We’re incredibly squeaky, but we like the way we sound together.

May we walk in Beauty!

Confession

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It always happens about mid-month when I am doing a poem-a-day: I start to poop out a bit, leaving the work of it–even the imagining part–until later and later in the day.  I loved the idea I started to work with today, using this crazy photo from Facebook to get the prompt rolling (it’s on the theme of confession), but now I feel the pressure to rush it so I can get on to planning tomorrow’s classes.

Confession

I admit it:
I still have the vandal’s fantasies,
One of my heroes is Banksy.
I love the artists and agitators
who take their social commentary
to the streets.

Sometimes I hear stories
of the tricksters and their mischief
and I wish that I had thought of them myself–
like exchanging the voices of talking dolls
so Barbie growls, “Vengeance is mine!”
and G.I. Joe opines, “Math class is sooooo hard!”

In college, I dreamed of joining
ninja women climbing billboards
to plaster “Not on our bodies!”
over the bodies of women
selling cars with their bodies.

Today was another last straw
in a long, long line of last straws:
Two packets of poetry magnets,
the pink one and the blue.
I want to buy them up and scramble,
then sell them in orange and green packages
declaring: Ballet worms and rugby wings!
I’ll climb into my fairy aeroplane
and grab my handbag
for a ride with the skeleton bunnies.

This is just a warning
so when you see the headlines
about the local schoolteacher
caught making a ruckus in the toy store,
you won’t need to be shocked.
Just roll your eyes and say,
“Well, it’s about time!”

Gratitude List:
1. Bluebells!  (I know–they’re technically grape hyacinths, but I don’t really care.  We called them bluebells when I was a child, so bluebells they will be).
2. Spring tonic pesto: large handfuls of chickweed, with a little dandelion, burdock, nettle, garlic mustard, wild mustard, sorrel, wild garlic.
3. Joss’s book is past seventy pages now.  He keeps adding sections: tonight included pieces of a Baby Animals calendar and a Birds calendar.  And always the demand, like a pushy schoolteacher: “Write sentences!”
4. A spring-like day.  I feel better, being slightly sick on day like today, than I did, being mostly well on a gray and cloudy day.
5. Reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Everything with Ellis.

May we walk in Beauty!

Assessing the Damage

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Today’s poetry prompt is to write about damage.  I have let it go until very late, and I am feeling a little under the weather, so it’s going to be a quick-ish thing:

The week after the whirling winds
twisted the house like toys and tossed
them in pieces all around someone’s neighborhood,
scattering debris across the cornfields
like some strange new crop,
we drove out to see the scene,
to assess the damage.

Numbly, the people were picking
through the wreckage of their lives,
holding out their hopes for one family photo,
one undamaged antique china cup
left untouched by the capricious winds.

Just so, when the winds have torn through a life,
we need to witness, to wander through the scene,
grasping what we can salvage with both hands
and holding the scraps and mementos
against our still-beating hearts.

If some day, one of us sees the other one
holding the shards of a dream
or the sodden mess of a hope,
let’s plan (now) that we will step
from the safe vantage point of ourselves
and help each other search
for that one thing that remains whole.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Third Quarter Grades are complete and submitted!
2. I am so glad that I chose to submit work for the Spoken Word Festival again this year.  I love to soak up the energy of poets and wordsmiths.
3. The life of my Uncle Paul, who made his crossing this morning.  The grieving and letting go has been a long, long journey.  I will remember his delight in light and art and photography.  Prayers of blessings and comfort to his family.
4. The willows have begun to put on their lacy veils.  The maples in the woods are all over in red buds.
5. Wind flowers.  The anemone have risen to take the place of the crocus.

May we walk in Beauty!

Seasoning

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Tonight’s prompt is to write a poem about a season:

I am not going to write a poem tonight.
This dog of the seasons, who waits
between winter and spring
to spring out from nowhere,
teeth bared and fur on end.

So I won’t be writing a poem tonight.
Instead I”ll write a recipe:
30 mL of Dayquil
2 zinc tablets
two droppers of Elderberry tincture
and sleep.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Adrenaline.  Got me through tonight, and will get me through tomorrow.
2. Sleep–most powerful elixir.  Nine times out of ten, it works for me.
3. Those poets and storytellers!  I love performing among them.  I love the deliberate and careful spoken word.
4. Forsythia is just starting to bloom!  Another thing to keep me liking my neighbor–so much yellow comes to him in daffodils and forsythia, it must be a message to me to be kind in my thoughts.
5. Josiah’s book.  While it can be draining because he is always begging us to write sentences in it, i love how excited he has been about making his own book.  And he keeps adding and adding and adding to it.
6. The people who are keeping vigil at Chiefs’ Hill today and tonight and tomorrow to grieve the bulldozers on sacred Native American burial grounds.
7. I just lost this entire post, but the computer had automatically saved the draft.  Yay for Autosave!

May we walk in Beauty!

How Will the Day End?

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DSCN7896

 

Today’s prompt is to write a poem titled “How <fill in the blank>”

How Will the Day End?

It will fade quietly away
or it will go out in blaze.

It will wander off quietly
into a corner of night,
or it will rattle down the drain,
gurgling as it swirls into the dark.

It will be filled with the quiet murmurings of doves,
the muttering of the last bars of the day’s bird choir,
or it will go out with the shrill whinny of the screech owl,
the screep of the fox, and the whoof of the white-tailed deer.

It will pull the shades of my eyes downward
and fill my brain with fog,
it will draw out my energy
like serum in a syringe.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  I know, daffodils again.  But.  Outside the school office is a row of creamy daffodils with a buttery center.  But in one clump, one daffodil has a bright gold-orange center, just begging for attention.
2. Making and playing Lego Chess with Ellis.
3. Friday morning hymn sing–this remains one of my favorite moments of my week.  My colleagues have wonderful voices.
4. The library book sale!  I scored lots of classics for my classroom shelves, and some more contemporary young adult novels, too.  Jon bought me a copy of Ted Kooser’s Delights and Shadows, which contains this lovely poem, titled “Screech Owl”:
All night each reedy whinny
from a bird no bigger than a heart
flies out of a tall black pine
and, in a breath, is taken away
by the stars. Yet, with small hope
from the center of darkness
it calls out again and again.
5. Delightfully shocking coincidences.  At the sale, Jon also bought a book called American Watercolors and a copy of Little Bear’s Friend, by Else Holmelund Minarik and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.  As he was poring through the book of water colors, he noticed a painting by Carolyn Brady.  In the shadows behind a vase of stunning flowers is a copy of Little Bear’s Friend!  What are the chances of that?  And not only one of the books we bought would feature a very different book from a very different genre, but that someone would be looking through it that closely, to catch it.

DSCN7891  DSCN7892  DSCN7894

 

The Working Poem

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Today’s prompt is to write a work poem:

The form of this poem is a little inspired by Charles Wright’s “The New Poem“:

This poem is a workhorse,
pulling the plow of the mind
across the blank and endless
field of the white page.

This poem works in a factory,
fitting the intricate parts together,
oiling them when needed,
and making the engines purr.

This poem will come to your rescue,
on call and ready to rush,
sirens blasting and red lights flashing,
to pull you from the wreckage.

This poem will broker your deals,
edge out the competition,
and buy up your stocks
when you need a little boost.

This poem will be your nanny,
wiping snotty noses
and baking oatmeal cookies.
(But it draws the line at changing diapers.)

You can count on this poem
to do the tasks you set it,
to come when called,
to maintain your filing system,
to vacuum the rugs.

Give it a bonus at the holidays,
and weekends off,
and it will be loyal
as long as you need it.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The poets and storytellers of the Spoken Word Festival #13.  What an honor to speak poetry with all these wise and thoughtful voices.  And for Daina and Marie who create this work of art each year.
2. The eager and fierce and thoughtful and considerate conversation of freshmen when they get a chance to discuss real-life issues.
3. Watching students come alive with a poetry game.
4. How stringing these sounds and symbols together makes a meaning.  What a miracle is language!
5. Resolve.

May we walk in Beauty!

Oh, Come On, Alfred!

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Today’s Poetry Prompt over at Poetic Asides is to write a dare poem.  This one is in the glosa form.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
–T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Time’s up, Alfred.
Make your decisions.
Settle your score with time
and risk it.
Eat that peach
and grow your hair.
Join those women
in their fancy parlor chats.
Stop asking
“Do I dare?”

Jump in.
Start the next round of Twister.
Knock their socks off, buddy.
That catty fog against the windows
has settled into your soul.
Wear a wig!  Carry a purse!
Swim with the mermaids.
Take up Irish drinking songs,
verse upon verse upon verse.
Disturb the Universe!

Ever since my college days,
you have been sitting
on my periphery,
asking me these questions,
reminding me that hesitations
breed paralysis, a crime
of omission,
of never-having-dared,
waiting patiently in line:
In a minute there is time. . .

And in a minute
the chance is gone,
the mermaids have stopped singing,
your hair has gone gray.
Sure, it could always have been better,
but it could also be much worse.
Step into the center of your life, Alfred,
and all the foggy yellow clouds of doubt
will gradually disperse:
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
Gratitude List:
1. The smell of those soaps I bought at Savemart today: Sandalwood, Rosewood Geranium, and Patchouli.  Scent is one of my favorite senses.  These three beauties have flipped on the happy switch in my brain.
2. My students.  I was reminded today of some of my students from last semester who were wild and disruptive–not at all meanly or even rudely, but enough to tire a teacher.  And thinking about this particular trio, I realized how incredibly fond I am of them all, how something in the challenge of working with them day-to-day and treasuring them rather than letting them get my goat makes me feel a particular delight in the memory of them.
3. Have I mentioned daffodils?
4. Fresh spinach, right from the field.  Give me a few more weeks of this and I might even be an acceptable blood donor again.  Call me the Woman of Iron.
5. Mockingbird has found his springtime voice.  I wish my ears were a little more discerning, and could count the number of calls in his repertoire.  He’s a pretty vociferous polyglot.  (Yeah–purple.  It was fun to say, though.)

May we walk in Beauty!