Gratitudes

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

dscn9222

Today’s poetry prompt is to write a poem about something that happens again and again.

This is a poem in hope that the cycle will continue for many years to come:

The Monarchs Return to Mexico
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Every year they find their way back.
Through the veils of mist that hover
over the mountain passes they flutter.

Their flaming wings set the woods afire
as morning sun sparkles through the canopy.
The forest breathes with orange light.

Gratitude List:
1. The music in church today. “Kyrie, eleison.” Supporting each other in song. Sitting next to Nancy and harmonizing with her, blending our voices.
2. A wonderful set of interviews at LMS this afternoon: Phyllis Pellman Good interviewed nine alumni about their work, how LMS prepared them for their lives, and what touchpoints they use for making ethical/moral decisions. Profound.
3. Seeing people’s safety pins.
4. The poet Andrea Gibson tweeted something about remembering how music heals. Yes.
5. Making salt dough with the kid.

May we walk in Beauty!

Doorway to Winter

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2013_october_110

Today’s prompt is to write a poem about a month. I will try an acrostic:

November
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Now we settle the fields for winter
Once the final harvest is gathered,
Verdant green of summer turning
Ever into autumn’s golden.
Morning sun sprinkles the hillsides
Before the chill of night recedes.
Enter the doorway to winter.
Rest in the womb of the dark.

Gratitude List:
1. A clean house. I didn’t get any grading done today, but my house is clean again, and I feel like I can live in it instead of just existing in it.
2. Water. Clean water. Wild water. River and stream water.
3. November. I still have much to learn from November. This is the third year that I am back to work, and November is no longer the gentle quiet slide into winter. I need to take care to give myself solitude and dreaming time in the coming weeks as we wander into the dark.
4. Many chances to practice. Practice nonattachment. Practice nondefensiveness. Practice nonviolence in word and gesture.
5. This cozy red fleece nightgown-thing that Sandra gave me last year.

May we walk in Beauty!

Golden in Golden Light

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susans

Today’s prompt is to write a description poem.

Ginger Tom
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Golden in golden light,
he shines among the leaves
(golden like the autumn sun itself
slanting through sycamore),
he wades through layers
of leaves in the yard.

Gratitude List:
1. Tight four-part harmony. Young women’s quartet singing, “Make Us Instruments of Your Peace.” Such incredible musicians at my school.
2. I got to meet Hudson this morning. Sarah, a student who is training six-month-old Hudson to be a service dog, brings him to school for part of each day to help him learn to work within a school setting. She brought him to my room this morning. Their bond is powerful. She is a mature and intuitive caretaker, gently and sweetly offering him correction (“Try again”) and praising him when he succeeds.
3. Sun through the golden oak tree outside the Fine Arts Center.
4. Safety Pins–All the safety pins. People declaring themselves to be safe presence.
5. This is surreal and hilarious and so delightful I almost had to stop my car. On the way out of school this afternoon, I followed a goat. A man driving a motorized wheelchair was pulling a little blue trailer. In the trailer was a little white goat, wagging its tail happily and looking around curiously.  I felt like I had driven into a Dr. Seuss book.

May we walk in Beauty!

Late-Blooming

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imag2305
Late-blooming azalea.

Today’s prompt is to write a tragedy poem. I’m not sure I am up to writing something that feels so real for me at the moment.

Numb
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

The sun still rose the next day
though you couldn’t see it for the rain
or for the veil of gauze that shock had raised
between you and the world.

The birds still sang, but your ears
were ringing, your hearing dimmed
by the hum of loss that roared
all around you wherever you went.

You might have felt the gentle autumn breeze
except that your bones were chilled to the marrow
and you shivered even in your coat and scarf.

Nothing seemed to pierce the numbness
that encased you like a layer of ice,
nothing warmed you,
nothing broke through,
until you began to feel the rhythm
rising upward through the soles of your feet,
the voices singing all around you,
chanting your name, calling you Beloved.

Gratitude List:
1. All my beloveds
2. The sheer beauty of an orange cat walking through fall leaves
3. Autumn in Ducktown Woods
4. Commiseration
5. The work of the heart, which is not all joy and love, but also grief and rage

May we walk in Beauty!

Just Don’t Forget

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imag2280

I am so weary. It’s been a difficult day.

Today’s prompt is Call Me _________.

For some reason my brain went with doggerel tonight.

Call Me
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

You can call me Raging Heart,
Heart of Tiger, Heart of Flame.
You can call me Crushing Fury.
Just don’t forget my other name.

You can call me Quivering Spirit,
Cowering Critter, Anxious Mouse.
You can call me Wild-Eyed Worry.
Just find the doorway to my house.

You can call me Grieving Moonchild,
Weeping Willow, Wailing Place.
You can call me Wounded Creature.
Just remember how to see my face.

Gratitude List:
1. My family, spaghetti, coffee, and salted caramel ice cream. I held myself together long enough to make it home and take in this good medicine.
2. The deepening of colors on rainy days. Such rich color.
3. Community. All the pledges to hold each other, to love each other, to protect each other.
4. Resolve
5. How grieving builds empathy

May we walk in Beauty!

Repeating Herself

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leaves

Today’s prompt is a Two-for-the-Price-of-One:
Nothing will be the same. Nothing will ever change.
I’m going to add a third in my series of History poems. You can see the other two Here and Here.

You Don’t Have To
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

History has caught up with me again.
She sidles up to me in line at the polls.
“I like the new look, Sister,” she says
fiddling with her many scarves and shawls.
“Yup. I like the new look,” she says again.

I watch her fidgeting and fussing
like she always does. She can’t keep still.
She makes me jittery. A feather boa slips
off her shoulder to the floor.
I don’t think I’ve changed a bit in twenty years,
except for wrinkles and sags. But now
I look at her more closely:
“History–Is that a black eye?”

She avoids my gaze and sighs,
occupied with tucking in her shirt,
adjusting her wide hat upon
her elaborate hairdo.

“Okay, okay,” she says finally,
“So I dressed as Susan B. for Halloween.”
I watch her gather up her shawls.
“I dressed up as Susan B. for the Elec–”
“I know,” I interrupt. “You don’t have to
repeat yourself.” For the first time ever,
History looks me right in the eye:
“You’re right, Sister. I sure don’t.”

Gratitude List:
1. Poll Workers. Thank you to all of you who have given your time to make our democracy run. A friend of mine was among a group of poll workers threatened by a voter today. Police intervened.
2. Susan B. Anthony
3. Birds
4. The constants. Love, for instance.
5. Fresh air.

May we walk in Beauty!

Blessing for Election Day and Beyond

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

JClabyrinth
I find myself doodling and drawing labyrinths again–it always seems to happen when I am thrown off-balance. Here is one of my favorite labyrinths, up at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville.

Today’s Poetry Prompt is to write an Activity Poem.

Blessing for Election Day and Beyond
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

May we be spinners of webs,
catching each other,
wrapping each other
in silken threads
to keep us all from falling.

May we be builders of bridges,
creating firm pathways
so all may walk safely
over the chasm
or meet in the middle.

May we be wanderers,
willing to walk in the wild places,
seeking each other
when distance has
broken our circles.

May we be dreamers
and planners, wishers
and makers, devising a future
where everyone
may find a home in love.

Gratitude List:
1. A pileated woodpecker sailing through the treetops and sunshine on the way down Ducktown this morning. It has been a long time since I have seen one.
2. Getting the grades in. What’s the old saying? “The wonderful thing about hanging by your fingernails is it feels so good when you’re done.” Yeah, that.
3. The promise of a warm and comfortable bed very soon. I admit it, small as that hour is, the time change is challenging for me. I always feel like I need extra sleep to handle it. I am off to bed VERY soon.
4. Jon Carlson’s thoughtful reminder in chapel this morning: The really important thing is Love. I will carry that with me like a shiny pebble into the day tomorrow, and the days that follow.
5. You, my friends. You keep bringing me back to center when I start to fray around the edges. What bright and brilliant community.

Hold on tightly. Breathe deeply. Smile at each other often. Get some sleep.

Claustrophobic

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN8044
Because today’s poem is about claustrophobic passages, I am posting this photo of my favorite weeping beech tree, and a passage to the light.

Today’s Poetry Prompt is to write about a Phobia.

Claustrophobia
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Perhaps I have always been afraid to be born,
unable to bear the tunnel passage,
the sudden loss of air, of light,
the moment just before emergence.

In the dreams I am always
stuck in the opening,
caught between worlds
unable to go forward or go back.

There came a day when I shed those brick walls,
left the constrictor’s coils behind me,
raced across the open field like a deer
suddenly freed from the snare.

That day when I bounded to freedom
I let god out of her golden cage, too,
and she roared–a mighty wind–
across the meadows.

Gratitude List:
1. Orange leaves, like bits of flame, slipping through the sky.
2. Orange fox, like a small brush fire, sauntering through the grasses.
3. This has been such a season of training of the love muscle as someone said somewhere in a random internet post today. I keep not passing the test. I keep giving in to the Panicky Raging Maniac in my brain. Today, and tomorrow, and Tuesday, and then especially on Wednesday, I am going to see if I can pass the Love ALL Your Neighbors test.  All of ’em, Sweetheart. You’ve got to love. All. Of. Them.
4. Encouragement from the peanut gallery. This evening, I said to Jon (about the grading stack), “I can finally see the light at the end of this tunnel. I think I am going to make it.”  From the other side of the room, one of the munchkins started to chant, “You can do it! You can do it!”
5. That hurdle has been leapt. Grades are marked ready for the Registrar.

Don’t forget to smile at each other today.

Crossed

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

pumpkins

Today’s prompt is to write a Wires poem:

Crossed
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

How has it come to this crossing,
this haunted house of mis-
understanding?

How have we crossed our wires
so wickedly, short-
circuited so utterly
our communication?

Our words don’t even mean
what they used to mean,
issuing from hearts mis-
construing, from minds
tangled like wires,
crossed like fingers
behind our backs.

Gratitude List:
1. Crescent moon caught in the leafy branches of the autumn sycamore
2. Those bright planets keeping her company
3. A murmuration of starlings wheeling in concert over the hollow
4. The old owl hooting in the bamboo grove
5. Vegetarian sausages so I can roast something over the fire, too

May we walk in Beauty!

An Imagined Life

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mermaid1
Still playing with Dreamscope:  This time I took yesterday’s creation, and melded it with a selfie.

Today’s prompt is to write a poem about an imagined life.  Today for my class quiet moment, I read Joy Harjo’s Grace. I will let the pacing of that one inspire me–I am unable to break the dogma of shorter line lengths, but I am moved by the sense of the mythical in the mundane in Harjo’s poem.  (Here is a link to a photo of a Patagonian Cavy.)

An Imagined Life
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

In the middle of November in the year of the Patagonian Cavy,
we wandered the fields where Wind called our names, as if
we and Wind were on speaking terms, as if
we had not heard the voice of the wolf
in her growling, in the way she howled over the ridge.

Had we not listened to her wild, insistent portent,
we might have noticed the dirge in her sighing,
heard the omen in her singing,
the augury behind the siren song
that sent us whirling like ravens in her wake.

Perhaps the way would have been less worrisome,
less crowded with grief, had we listened
longer before leaving,
but wiser now we wander,
now that we have learned to sing her songs.

Gratitude List:
1. Setting goals
2. Striving
3. Imagination
4. All four of us playing Legos together
5. Leaves!

May we walk in Beauty!