Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Poem a Day: 28

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Today’s Prompts were Angel and Looking Forward/Looking Backward. All I could think of was Look Homeward Angel, which I haven’t read. I looked up some quotes and made a glosa.

Pillar of Salt
a glosa
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

“. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. . . . Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language,
the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? . . .
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.”
―Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

How can we help it, but to turn our faces homeward,
like the nameless wife who shifted her shoulders sidewards,
silent salty tears on her cheeks, for one last longing
homeward glance, one final chance to see—but salt
was all she saw, punished for wanting a parting glimpse
of all she was losing, all the remembered places
of childhood and family home. None of it her choosing, she
was swept along in the vortex of fearsome husband
and fiercer god, to completely lose her past, all traces:
a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. And of all the forgotten faces,

every stone upon the future path, each leaf, each door—
reminders of the life she’d lost. Perhaps better to be salt
than live a life of regret, pooling always in her eyes.
But we, who live onward into the stream of time,
how shall we turn our gazes forward while we carry
lost childhood on our backs like sacks, growing heavier with age?
If the angel is intended to look homeward, which direction shall we tell her?
Behind this salted pillar of me are childhood homes, and the home
of this moment, and ahead of me, home rests upon an unturned page.
Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language,

of loss, of memory, of the spiraling nature of time, where all
turns inward. Look inward, Angel. Look into the pools
where no-time swirls and tense no longer makes sense,
where past inhabits future, and now is all we can know,
Our gazes seeking lost whens turn our spines to spirals,
and salt explodes into flocks of singing birds, then
mirrors back onto itself, and the child running in the meadow
is suddenly an ancient tree silently observing time’s curl—
grief the cord that binds all times together, the weight of memory again,
the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

There, upon the windowsill, a small white stone,
a branch of dogwood, pink with bloom, your eye
caught by the yellow green of a single leaf. Beyond,
a green stone, an oak leaf burnished brown, then
a wide flat stone upon the crest of a hillside enwrapped
by vines, and triplet red leaves of ivy, one plane
of many layers, grief and rage and joy entwined.
One gaze encompassing all, the map home: a stone
of salt, leaves of cinder, ash scattered in the doorway, then:
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

Starve the Vampires

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I’m trying to practice non-outrage. Mindful awareness of the dangers of powerful narcissists and greed-heads, but non-outrage in the response. They feed on our outrage (and by they, I mean he).

So. Attention not to the energy-vampires, but to the quiet, dedicated ones who keep going, keep doing, keep meeting the needs. Attention to the hurting ones, to the seekers, to my own unmoored emotions.

I will no longer feed the ravenous energies of the attention-whores in the halls of power.

Starve them, I say. No more oxygen, no more yeast, no more feeding.

They prey upon our energies, these public carrion eaters, draining, destroying, getting larger and more vicious with each ounce of outrage and anxiety we place into their bowls. They howl for more. And we give it to them.

No more, I say. (At least for now. At least as long as I can stay mindful.)

Let’s circle up, tell our own brilliant stories, share our laughter and our poems, plan the revolution.

Sure, we’ll poke holes in the balloons of lies and destroy the shining facades to reveal the rotting heart, but not through outrage and fear. Step into the circle. Let’s turn our faces away from the bullies who can survive only as long as we give them attention.

The bullies we contend with will not hesitate to find some small and vulnerable one to harm in order to get our attention, so let’s be ready to step in and stop harm, let’s shore up the walls of protection, but always with our backs to the bullies, our focus on the need, on healing the harm.

Gratitude List:
1. Sourdough bread for supper. My Local Flock of Yeast is getting excitable. I almost set them free yesterday, but they showed me their stuff.
2. Whole Wheat flour. I had to go to school just one more time, to find a couple things before my classroom was dismantled, so I went to Miller’s and found whole wheat flour!
3. Reminders that I am not alone. You are not alone. We are not alone.
4. The way the sun is slanting through the house at this time of morning.
5. The way trees bud in pink and orange andred before the green leaves pop out.

May we walk in Beauty!

“At the end of the day, I’d rather be excluded for who I include than included for who I exclude.” —Eston Williams

“Free me. . .from words, that I may discover the signified, the word unspoken in the darkness.” —Byzantine Prayer

“Some days, you don’t know whether
you are stepping on earth or water or air.
Place each foot carefully before you
and offer your weight gratefully to
whatever it is that holds you.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider

“Father, Mother, God,
Thank you for your presence
during the hard and mean days.
For then we have you to lean upon.

For those who have no voice,
we ask you to speak.
For those who feel unworthy,
we ask you to pour your love out
in waterfalls of tenderness.
For those who live in pain,
we ask you to bathe them
in the river of your healing.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless
sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the
world that which we need most—Peace.”
—Maya Angelou

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
—Leonard Bernstein

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.”
—Mary Oliver

“If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” —Harper Lee

Poem a Day: 27

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Today’s prompts were massive and road. I was watching the clouds on the way to do one final clean-up task in my classroom at school, and this poem spilled out.

Thunder and Her Children
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

When Thunder’s Children
walked the cloud-road
over the rim of the world,
massive mountains
arched their backs
to touch the children’s feet.

When the children
raced each other
back up the ribbons of sky
into the arms of their mother,
the earth sighed into hollows
and water pooled in the valleys.

WhenThunder sang
her sleepy brood to sleep,
trees sprang from the hillsides,
raising their joyful branches,
shaking their leafy crowns
and humming with her song.

And while the children slept,
Thunder curled herself around them,
and dreamed meadows into being,
and birds flying, and small animals
burrowing into the earth,
and all that is Became
while Thunder rested.

Leavening

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I thought that I would give up on the Goldfinch Wild Yeast herd because the two times I tried to make something with it, it turned to weirdly textured, salty flatbread. I ignored it for two days, neither feeding nor stirring it, and finally looked at it last night. The texture was spongy and bubbly. So I fed it. This morning I decided just to use the whole lot of it, try to make something, and call myself finished, so I mixed up a dough this morning, and it was rubbery and hard. I decided that it was destined for compost, but decided to let it rise anyway.

Two and a half hours later, it was double its size, and light and fluffy. I punched it down, pulled off a one-cup portion to put back in my now-clean Yeast Corral jar, and shaped it into a loaf and some rolls.

I, too, am rather a late-bloomer. Perhaps you are, too? Maybe we will also rise with such grace and great will. Let us be leaven. (Hmm. Do we need to write some leaven/heaven poems?)

Gratitude List:
1. The Wild Herd of Goldfinch Yeast rose! Yay, little yeasts!
2. How a yoga session unknotted me this morning
3. That pretty green bush Jon planted on the bluff ten or fifteen years ago has come into its own in the past couple years, this year especially. It’s really an elegant little being. I’m so glad I failed to kill it those times when I accidentally mowed over it.
4. Digital/virtual communities–of course they can’t replace the real thing, but they do provide deep connections when the real thing is curtailed.
5. Hugging. Do trees hug back? I think they do. I think that hugging trees also encourages endorphins. (Why don’t you experiment on that for yourself?)

May we walk in Beauty!

“As truly as God is our father, so truly is God our mother.” —Julian of Norwich

“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.” ―Anaïs Nin

“Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.” ―William Wordsworth

Forever Oneness,
who sings to us in silence,
who teaches us through each other.
Guide my steps with strength and wisdom.
May I see the lessons as I walk,
honor the Purpose of all things.
Help me touch with respect,
always speak from behind my eyes.
Let me observe, not judge.
May I cause no harm,
and leave music and beauty after my visit.
When I return to forever
may the circle be closed
and the spiral be broader.
―Bee Lake (Aboriginal poet)

“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”
―Joseph Campbell

“I can’t tell you why your story is important, only that it is.” ―Mara Eve Robbins

Poem a Day: 26

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Today’s prompts are Noodle, and Change. I couldn’t figure out how to add the noodle. Maybe the poem itself is something if a noodle. . . .

Change Surreal
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Step by step, prepare.
Spare a stare, don’t glare
but glance, this instance,
an instrument of intent,
bent on being, on seeing,
seeming seamless,
streaming, steeling
steady, ready for
reasons, for seasons.
The horizon not so horrible,
not the terrible terminal,
only an internal intersection,
new direction derelict.
Any edict an educated
editorial, tutorial surreal.
Real deal delivered.

Unmixed Attention

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Gratitude List:
1. Crisp morning
2. Looking forward to family Zoom today
3. Ten deep breaths of outside air enliven me
4. Greeting the Beings of this place grounds me
5. Rain brings more greens

May we walk in Beauty!

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” —Rumi

“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” —Simone Weil

“You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.” —Leymah Gbowee

“God speaks to each of us as [she] makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

“I do not see a delegation of the four-footed.
I see no seat for the eagles.” —Chief Oren Lyons, Onondaga

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” —Kurt Vonnegut

“I told them we’re tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re for, I said, not just what we’re against. We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff—biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice—but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask.” ―Rachel Held Evans

Go deeper.
Past thoughts into silence.
Past silence into stillness.
Past stillness into the heart.
Let love consume all that is left of you.
—Kabir

Poem a Day: 25

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Today’s prompts were to write a poem that includes cloud words, and to do a re-mix of a poem from the month. I realized I have sort of been writing one long poem all month. Oy. I did a bit of a mash-up, and it holds together rather startlingly.

Re-Mix, With Clouds
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

It seems that
there is nothing now
that is not this:
the spiral unravels
the lions of jazz are dying
the World Snake sheds her skin
the tides turn
In the burning rooms of time,
we wait for the new world to appear.

Our feet take the rocky trail away from the village
to follow where blossoms may lead.
All we have seen before is somehow
new now, more verdant.
Fronds unfurl where dragonflies
hover above, large as dragons.
But I know of two who nearly lost the trail,
wandering far into the shadows.

Coyote is a fixture in the myth
of this lonely landscape. A howl
echoes within the embrace
of wildness and winsome, where we bump
against our own internal resolve

Plague Doctor! Plague Doctor!
Whither shall we wander?
Only to the garden gate—no further.
The egg and the seed are the medicine.
Grief is the egg of the moment,
just before you hear your name.

We’re trapped in the strata,
the cumulus, the haloed nimbus,
hallowed cumulostratus,
beneath the blue robes of the Beloved,
draped over us like a veil,
beneath Fortune’s shifting skirts:
like winter, she will come again,
trailing a net behind her
to rescue the words she has lost.
Could she have stayed within the boundaries?
She has folded her heart
into an origami bird, ready for flying.

We must relinquish our control.
This now is a narrowing funnel,
thinning the potent possibilities
to this stretched limbo of waiting.
I listen for your trilling whistle, clear and bright.

In the ending was Spider:
What has once been will be again.
Close the door on your way out.

When We All Go Marching In

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Room 206 before I took down the things from the walls and bulletin board.

This week I have been the worship leader for my church’s Sunday service, my first time to prepare the videos to open the service, to pray, to bless us at the end, and to ask others to do children’s time and scripture. It felt daunting, and it highlighted how much I miss being part of that weekly gathering. And so last night’s dream:

In the dream, I am planning worship, asking people to make videos for the Sunday morning service. The pastor suggests that we really need a saxophone solo, so I go searching for people I know who could record a saxophone solo, but suddenly it’s no longer quarantine, and we’re holding church in a parking lot in a city (on folding chairs) and it’s about to begin and I have not yet found someone to do the saxophone solo when an old friend comes walking by and I ask him, and he starts to play “Oh When the Saints Go Marching In” and everyone gets up and follows him in a dancing march around and around the parking lot, and everyone is laughing and dancing and celebrating, and no one is afraid to bump into anyone else or to touch.

And now I am crying.

The other day, Jon and I were talking about what it will mean when parts of Pennsylvania go from red to yellow, and I realized that for me, it won’t necessarily be any different. Really, in life Before, I mostly went to four places: church, school, and to visit our parents. When we go to yellow, we still won’t go to church, we definitely won’t go to school, and I don’t think we’ll be able to visit retirement communities yet. It feels pretty bleak.

I wrote that thing the other day about the After, how the time when this is over won’t be a “getting back to normal.” I like that awareness that people are putting into the world–this is a time for change and transformation, to envision what the new way will be when we are again out in the world. Still, for me, I long to get back to a normal where we can brush past each other in public, link arms, hug, dance, celebrate together without fear, when we can go marching in, joyfully, to the public places we share together.

Gratitude List:
1. Sometimes something that appears and creates stress is also really exciting. I have a week to get my whole classroom cleared (that means my thousand and one books packed, too) because it looks like construction on our air conditioning will begin in June!
2. Anticipating Oriole
3. Quiet mornings with my boy before anyone else is up
4. Good stretching
5. Dreaming well

May we walk in Beauty!

“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians. As far as I’m concerned, it’s their choice, but I CHOOSE to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved. Young people, black and white, know this. That’s why they’re so involved in politics. We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. So I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and NOT reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.” —Nina Simone

“A loving silence often has far more power
to heal and to connect than the
most well-intentioned words.” —Rachel Naomi Remen

“The secret to waking up is unscrambling the word earth.” —anonymous

“I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.” ―Rachel Held Evans

“What a comfort to know that God is a poet.” ―Rachel Held Evans

“Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world.” —Johannes Kepler

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” —John Keating (Robin Williams in Dead Poet Society)

“You are the Ground of all being
the Well-Spring of time
Womb of the earth
the Seed-Force of stars.
And so at the opening of this day
we wait
not for blessings from afar
but for You
the very Soil of our soul
the early Freshness of morning
the first Breath of day.”
—John Philip Newell

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” ―J.K. Rowling

Poem a Day: 24

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I had to rush around today to do some sudden work that came up, so I rushed the poem. The prompts are Anchor and Nature.

Anchored
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

feet bare on bare earth
breath in sync with breeze
heartbeat rhymes with
the beating heart of sycamore

on a breath send roots
down and down through
soil through loam around
stone around bone

anchor to the core
of the mother

Allow Yourself to Be Seen

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The white egret has been visiting the creek across the road since the neighbors took the bamboo down. I took a photo with my phone through the binoculars, then did some filter-work to add some mood and deal with the odd blur.

I put my mantra on a sticky note on my big computer screen yesterday:
Limber, Heathy, & Strong.
Then I added another:
Straighten your spine.
And then:
BREATHE

These were good reminders throughout the day. It was hard to keep my intention of getting up every hour–back-to-back meetings, getting caught up in the thing I was doing, forgetting to check the time. . . Today, I will try again.

Gratitude List:
1. Visiting egrets
2. I found my Spirit Voyage Sampler CD–just perfect for quiet stretching and meditating.
3. How April throws up poems from previous years in my face. Some I thought were pretty good are kind of meh, and some I was uncomfortable with are grabbing me now. Maybe in May, I’ll finally find the energy to start another collection. We’ll see.
4. Catching new rhythms.
5. So much green!

May we walk in Beauty!

“‪‪Imagine the tiny percentage of your body that is directly involved in reading this sentence. Now, consider the oversized percentage this conscious part of you occupies in your concept of yourself. So? What does this discrepancy mean? Is our “who” different from our “what”?‬‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Where you ache to be recognized, allow yourself to be seen.” —Toko-pa Turner

“People have said to me, ‘You’re so courageous. Aren’t you ever afraid?’ I laugh because it’s not possible to be courageous if you’re not afraid. Courage doesn’t happen without fear; it happens in spite of fear. The word courage derives from ‘coeur’, the French for ‘heart.’ True courage happens only when we face our fear and choose to act anyway, out of love.” —Julia Butterfly Hill

“Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?” —Wendell Berry

“Every country should have a Ministry of Peace” —Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire

“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.” —Tom Robbins

“I never want to lose the story-loving child in me. A story that meant one thing to me when I was forty may mean something quite different to me today.” —Madeleine L’Engle