Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Nests

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
<Prompt 5: Write a poem about something concealed/write about something unconcealed.>
All through the verdant season
the nest-builders have concealed
within the thick cover of leaves
their great treasures, crafted
of vines and twigs, cobwebs, grasses:
their work of the season’s passing.
Then, mystery and secrecy–
the eggs, dappled and speckled,
and suddenly, ravenous nestlings.
But now, all is revealed.  The trees
have dropped their golden skirts
about their ankles, and the secret is spilled.
There, in the yellow maple,
a random twiggy pile of mockingbird nest.
A bedraggled clump of matted grass
at the furthest dangling limb of the poplar
is all that remains of oriole’s art.
In the tree at the top of Ducktown Road,
a gray orb, nest of a colony of paper wasps.
“Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke
In the sky, those rippled clouds,
ribs of the gods, and birds gathering,
riding the sky-road south for winter.
2013 November 001

Mockingbird’s secret

(Blank) Sheet, a Grouchy Little Poem

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

<Prompt 4: (Blank) Sheet> I really did have this one finished yesterday, but I fell asleep in the recliner while I was waiting for my turn at the computer.  I am having a little more trouble trusting Mockingbird this year.  I want my poems to be just a little more polished before I post them.  I don’t want to go with first impulses, which feel flimsy and light.  Instead of trusting that writing will bring the inspiration, I am waiting around and pushing for it.  Then I get stuck.  So this poem turned into a complaint.  Here goes:

A sure-fire method to freeze the gears,
to gum up the fine workings of the Muse:

Tell the poet to write
about the Blank Sheet.

The Blank Sheet is the yawning chasm
we stare into, the poet’s dark
and treacherous Void.
It draws me in like a moth
to the challenge and the danger.

Tell me not to think about the elephant
and suddenly everywhere I see an elephant.

 

I need to keep reminding myself that the first time I did this, lots of days were duds.  The whole point is to keep the lines open, to keep fluid and hopeful, to begin to shape the inner work of the daily life into pieces of a poetic puzzle that fit together.  Even though something in me is cringing at my early attempts, this grouchy little poem is exactly what I needed today, even if it won’t make the chapbook.  Today’s prompt (I will try to be more prompt in execution) is a two-fer: Write a concealed poem.  Unconceal everything.

2013 November 008

Gratitude List:
1.  Pushing through
2.  Those leaves!  I feel as I if I died and went to Vermont.
3.  Rilke
4.  Elephants
5.  Endings and Beginnings: Today begins the last week of CSA shares for the 2014 season.  Now we gear up for December shares.

May we walk in Beauty.

Begin Again

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

(Poem-A-Day Prompt 3: “The Last Time I was Here)

Here we go again,
me and Mike Finnegan,
and some old Benedictine:
Begin again,
begin again,
begin again.

I thought I had evolved
past the brooding and the sulk,
past lack of will, lack of resolve.
Begin again,
begin again,
begin again.

The last time I was here,
the emptiness was vaster,
I was drawn to the disaster.
Begin again,
begin again,
begin again.

Today that distant light
seems brighter, closer, right
around the corner.
Begin again,
begin again,
begin again.

Beginning November Poem-a-Day Challenge

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here goes.  I’m diving in to the Poem-a-Day challenge two days late.  These first two or three might be a little more slapdash than even Mockingbird would approve, but that’s the way it will have to be.  Please feel free to join me!  I’d be honored if you want to post your own poems here.  Or you can follow the prompts and post on Brewer’s blog itself.

Day One Prompt: Write an appearing poem.

Riddle: a tanka

Down halls of dream, through
tattered veils of old stories
no fury, no fear
only the question of where
the next riddle will appear.

Day Two Prompt:  Write a News of the Day poem.  This one is a found poem, right from the source.  I want to practice more found poetry, though in a hurry to finish a poetry quota is probably not the moment to do it.  Mockingbird says to stop apologizing and get on with it.

Bomb: a found poem
source

Chief said police
will continue to its investigation,
the fourth in the past two weeks.
Post-9/11, we cannot turn a blind eye.
Nothing was found.

Students were evacuated
after the threat was found
written in a bathroom at 8:21 a.m.

Students and staff were returning
to finish out the day.
Nothing was found.

The district has notified parents.
Check back for updates.

 

Moving right along, here is the one I will work on today, and hopefully post by this evening or tomorrow morning:  Day 3 Prompt.

2013 November 019

Gratitude List:
1.  Glittering autumn sunlight
2.  An extra hour of sleep
3.  Punctuation
4.  Challenging myself
5.  Community rituals of remembrance

May we walk in Beauty.

All Souls Day

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Aunt Lizzie (Elizabeth Weaver) and
Grandma (Marian Weaver) quilting.
Is that Aunt Gladys or Aunt Sharon in the front?

Today is the third day of All Hallows, the day of All Souls, remembering particularly the ancestors, and those we love who have died.   My experience of grief has so often been grieving with people I love who have lost someone.  So today I am thinking of Eli and of Peter, of Julie and Raymond, of Joyce and Elaine and Gerald, of Cory, of Lee, of Harold.  And I am thinking of my grandparents, of Aunt Lois and Uncle Victor and Uncle Irvin, of Uncle John and Aunt Anna Lou, of Uncle Paul.

Today, for All Souls,
A Gratitude List for Ancestors and Loved Ones:
1.  for Ellis Kreider, Jon’s father, gentle and twinkly, earnest and thoughtful
2.  for Grandma, Marian Weaver–I still miss her
3.  for Aunt Lizzie, who could tell you stories all day without a pause
4.  for my blood ancestors and those of my children, for that marvelous branching and intertwining, like feathering tree roots going back and back
5.  for the ancestors of this place, the people who walked these woods and hills, hunting and foraging, traveling, centuries ago

May your memories hold you.

(Oh, and Happy Birthday, Mockingbird!  I missed it.  Yesterday was the birthday of this blog.  I began it last year as a place to put the poems that I write in response to Robert Brewer’s Poem-a-Day Challenge.  I got caught up in the whole experience of the days of All Hallows this year, and missed yesterday’s poem.  Tomorrow I will begin that process again.  I may have to double up my poems for a couple days to catch up.)

All Saints

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

The dreams of All Hallows night are supposed to hold meanings and portents.  I dearly hope mine doesn’t qualify.  Here’s a look into my anxious and twisted brain: I spent the night running from the Taliban.  I would wake up, breathe a sigh of relief that the dream was over, and fall right back to sleep and into the same dream again.

Today is All Saints Day.    Here are some of my personal saints:

All Saints Gratitude List:
1.  Harriet Tubman, who followed her dreams out of darkness, but who didn’t stop there.  No she didn’t stop there.  She walked back into the darkness, back into the nightmare and brought so many back with her.
2.  Dirk Willems, 16th century Anabaptist martyr, who took his chance for escape when the lake froze by the tower where he was being held for refusing to recant his beliefs.  Months of deprivation had made him thin and lean, and he skidded across the ice to safety and freedom.  His well-fed pursuer, however, broke through the ice and started to drown.  Dirk Willems ran back across the ice and saved the man’s life.  He was re-captured and later put to death.
3.  Rumi, because his words are sublime.
4.  Wangari Maathai, who planted trees in Kenya, because the Earth needs trees to breathe and because women need sustaining work of their own to support their families, particularly when they are alone.  So she brought women together into supportive communities, where they supported themselves on the stipends they received from planting trees.
5.  Jane Addams, suffragist, social worker, agent of change.

Namaste

“Pouring Glory of the World Roaring By”

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

 Earth from space
Photo by Karen Nyberg, from ISS

Yesterday as I was out delivering boxes of fall vegetables, I heard this on the radio:

Chris Hadfield, former commander of the Space Station, describing space-walking for Terry Gross:  “. . .you’re holding on for dear life to the shuttle or the station with one hand, and you are inexplicably in between what is just a pouring glory of the world roaring by, silently next to you — just the kaleidoscope of it, it takes up your whole mind. It’s like the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen just screaming at you on the right side, and when you look left, it’s the whole bottomless black of the universe and it goes in all directions.”

And I, who live inside Earth time, with a carful of Earth’s bounty, with the trees of Earth exploding into choruses of scarlet and crimson and gold all around me–I am still trailing those words like spiderwebs caught in my hair:  “. . .a pouring glory of the world roaring by. . .”  I think I can feel it from here.  Can’t you?

Gratitude List:
1.  The pouring glory of the world roaring by.  Knowing it is doing that out there, but even here, inside Earth time and the ball of atmosphere.
2.  Community child-centered rituals.  Tonight I will take a couple costumed children down to the town to meet their town neighbors in the annual ritual when people open their doors to strangers and offer them sweets.
3.  The ancestors.  This is also the first of three days when many religious and cultural traditions remember those who have gone before us: the ancestors, the saints.
4.  Maple and sweet gum
5.  Quartzite that seeds the hills here and sparkles in the sun.

May we walk in Beauty.

Oak

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2013 October 108

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Oak
2.  Oak
3.  Oak
4.  Sycamore
5.  Oak

May we walk in Beauty.

Revisions

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2013 October 103

Gratitude List:
1.  Cardboard boxes and tape.  Easiest and most fun Halloween costume prep ever.  I hope they never grow out of their love of transforming boxes into costumes, play sets, posters, spy centers. . .
2.  Fleece pajamas and fleece slippers
3.  Friendship
4.  Revising poetry (Mockingbird says it’s okay to move on to this step)
5.  Working together

May we walk in Beauty.

Finding Poetry

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Found Poem
Source: Joss Weaver-Kreider

I just saw a tree
that had no leaf left

and

at first I thought
it was a giant feather.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
This is an old photo, from December,
but it shows some naked feathery trees.

Gratitude List
1.  Ten Years of Goldfinch Farm.  It has gone by in a flash.  It has been forever.  Happy Birthday, Bright Spot!
2.  Prayer.  Or singing.  Or writing poems.  Or drawing.  Or listening.  Or looking.  Or magic.  Whatever you call it, the energy that is the connective tissue of the Universe, the Multiverse.
3.  Four-part harmony
4.  Standing in the borderlands, looking around, and realizing that I’m ready for the journey.
5.  This contemplative morning time all to myself.

May we walk in Beauty, in Love