Gratitudes

Poem Cop-Out

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN9092
It’s a packing tape dispenser, but it is also a bear.

On some of these days
the only poem I can
muster is haiku

Lame, I know, but it’s what I’ve got today.

Gratitude List:
1. Sleep: I love that moment when I lie down and I can feel the tiredness receding, can feel my body relaxing, can let my mind follow its own trails
2. The ones who don’t give up
3. Moments of solitude and quiet in the midst of a busy time
4. Timeless stories–we’re getting into The Odyssey in Freshman English, and they’re hooked by the stories
5. Changing it up

May we walk in Beauty!

Listen for the Whisper

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN9134

Listen for the whisper of the moon, daughters.
Listen for the distant calling of a bird in the night.
Listen for the sound of your name in the trickling streams,
and breathe the calling deep into your soul.

Watch for your own colors in the sunrise, children.
Look for your own symbol in the curling vines.
Search the skies for clouds shaped like your own dreams,
and feel your soul take the shape of You.

The world is sending you signals at every moment:
You belong here.  You are a necessary part of this process.
Step into this moment of the River of your life
and feel the cooling waters reinvigorate your soul.

Gratitude List:
1. Spring warmth
2. The morning chatter of the tree people
3. Synchronicity–As when someone comes up and starts talking to you about the exact thing that you’re pondering in a moment
4. All the whispers, the colors, the patterns that seem to say, “You belong here.”
5. Quiet

May we walk in Beauty!

The Delegation

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN9114
The dragon I drew on the driveway.  

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

The wren is not waiting his turn to speak, nor should he.
He calls out into the clamorous room–his name, his name, his name.
The whales have been offering their words for some time now,
but no one at my table seems to be listening,
not to the whales, nor to the insistent chitter of the bats
who, though they have no place on the agenda,
are doing their best to make their voices heard.

Who will call the meeting to order?
Who will make sure that every voice is heard?

Gratitude List:
1. Add more caring adults to the circle of people who mentor my children: I had my first chance to watch the Wrightsville Little League coaches in action yesterday at their first game.  Our guys lost, but the coaches were excellent in their encouragement and their building of team spirit.  They were praising the kids for encouraging each other.  One hears horror stories, but there are wonder stories also.
2. The dawn is catching up to me.  The sun rises shortly after I do, and I have daylight to help me wake up more quickly.
3. Getting back to class today.  I love the break, but I get really antsy to head back into the classroom.
4. The right to vote.  I am going to believe that my vote counts, despite the voices inside me that bray and mock that hope.  But change does not stop with a vote.  We have to work for the justice we seek.
5. Blue jays.  They saunter through the sky like ruffians, like dudes, and they have absolutely no questions about their entitlement.  I like their bombast.  And their clear, loud whistles.

May we walk in Beauty!

Blooming

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN9130
The Musselman bush is blooming beautifully.

Listen to the sound
behind the cacophony,
underneath the boom
and clatter of the markets:
hear the cry of Cassandra.

Gratitude List:
1. An extra day to catch up
2. Sunshine through baby green
3. Yesterday’s lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ong nap
4. Seven-layer tortilla pie
5. Pink trees and bushes

May we walk in Beauty!

While You Were Sleeping

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN9151

A quickie little tanka this morning:

While you were sleeping,
small birds were calling outside
the sun was knocking
hard on the bedroom windows.
Messages were delivered.

Gratitude List:
1. Rice and Curry.  Anne and Todd’s East African meal last night, and the people who bought seats at the table in order to support my school.  What a lovely group of people.
2. The way the porch light shines through the ostrich ferns in the evenings.
3. The ferns.  One day they’re little fiddle heads, and then I blink, and they’re almost as tall as I am.
4. That moon last night, rising golden above the horizon.
5. Fortitude. Will. Determination. Grit.

May we walk in Beauty!

Follow Love

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN9176
I like to set my camera to “Fireworks” and then “draw” with fire.

There will be days, Bright Spirits,
when you will not know which way to go,
when the voices will tell you to follow a path
where light shines righteously through branches
and others are striding with purpose.

“This is the right way, the truest path,”
they will call to you, and they will wave their hands
and motion you to join them on their journey.
But you will sense something lurking there
in the hard, sharp edges of the light
and you will know that it is not your road.

But how will you know your own way?
Follow Love.  It will never lead you false.
It may whisper to you from the shadows
of a little-trodden tracks through brambles,
or call you across the wide and shining spaces
over rocky mountain passes,
leaving cairns and altars
to help you find your way.

Follow the roads where Love calls you.
Love will guide you where you must go.

Gratitude List:
1. The team of teachers and support staff and administrators who care for our children.  They pay attention, they notice, they plan and adapt and respond to the children’s needs.  It makes me want to commit even more fully to notice each of my own students with clarity and intention.
2. First family fire in the fire pit.  Making s’mores.
3. My first view this morning when I opened my eyes was a windowful of pink, where the dogwood tree is vigorously blooming.
4. In-service day.  Yesterday’s in-service offered some good time to collaborate, and learn from, and bond with colleagues.  I really do like the people I work with.
5. The flock of deer that ran across the road and leapt the stream into the bosque.  (My family tells me that I must call them a herd, but I feel like a herd is thunky and stolid, but a flock is fluttery and wispy, like the deer that crossed my road.  So my family will have to put up with my word.)

May we walk in Beauty!  May the rains water the earth and refresh us all.

Don’t You Wish that You Could Hear Them Ring?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN9125
Yesterday after school, I went out the front door and smelled something overpoweringly beautiful.  They’re here.

Just quickly:

A List Poem for Earth Day

Julia Butterfly Hill
The trees are breathing while we sleep
Wangari Maathai
The trees cover the hillsides now
Jane Goodall
The wild ones are watching
Rachel Carson
Above us, the falcons while and turn
John Muir
The mountains come alive with wildflowers
Vandana Shiva
The seeds break open and send forth roots
The Lorax
Someone is speaking for the ones with no voice
You

Gratitude List:
1. Defenders of the Earth.  Those girls who spoke in chapel yesterday about caring for the environment, following in the footsteps of Carson and Shiva and Muir and Hill.
2. Lilies of the Valley
3. Brown Creeper
4. Making Mandazis.  I have never made what I would call a truly successful batch until last night.
5. In-Service Day today (and my body sort of let me sleep in until 6:30).  I like to have occasional days where we are working, but I am being fed rather than doing the feeding.

Much Love!  May we walk in Beauty!

Threads of a Poem

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN8468

Spider is writing her poems along the field
from sedge to bramble to foxtail
in silver shining threads and dew.

Gratitude List:
1. Several new babies safely in the world now.  Blessings on the new people and their parents.
2. Dawn chorus.  I may need to change up my routine and do my writing in the evenings so I can sit out on the porch and listen to the morning’s symphony.
3. Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill.  It’s a symbol, and it’s only money, but it’s a nod to her role in our history.  The people we set up as our heroes shape who we become as a nation.  This is a small step, but it has the potential to show us a better side of who we can be.
4. Resolve.  Determination. Will.  I don’t know about you, but it seems as though I have energy cycles–sometimes I can only focus on getting done the things I need to get done at the moment, whether it’s a lot or a little.  There are times, however, when it seems as though the winds push through an extra measure of resolve, and the energy for moving forward is more constant.
5. How spring always has a new thing.  The crocus and the earliest spring flowers are faded, but a few daffodils remain.  Ms. Freiberg’s yellow tulips are still shining in the morning dew, and the my guarddogwood trees are daring each other to be the first to burst into bloom.  (Now, if only oriole would come and whistle for me.)

May we walk in Beauty!

Camels on the Brain

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

IMG_0461

My brain is all a-fuzz this morning.  It wants to keep attaching itself to that image from my dream last night, the one that kept me sleeping through the four o’clock hour (finally), of a camel lying in the bed of a truck, wearing sunglasses.  But I don’t have that manic inner edge on this sleepy morning that would enable me to make such a surreal poem.  Why don’t you try that one?  (Edit: Okay, so I did manage a little of that poem down below.)

Tomorrow is National Poem in Your Pocket Day, though your local town may have chosen a different day, so look it up.  Wrightsville is doing it on April 29.  But if you’re at my school, you need to have your poem ready to read to me tomorrow.  I will bring the chocolate.

I have five minutes for this poem:

The ghost of a dream
will inhabit the foggy
pathways of my brain
for ages.
I will spend today
driving to Kabul
behind a camel
or lurking in the hallways
of a grand hotel,
searching for lost memories.

Gratitude List:
1. Sleeping through four o’clock.  This is a big deal, and I am grateful, no matter how strange the dreams that accompanied that sleep.
2. Anticipating oriole.  Waiting for the orange flash and the whistle in the treetops.  Listen, listen and watch.
3. Inspiration.  Okay, it’s inspiration about how to introduce adjective clauses to the freshmen, but when that’s the soup you swim in, it’s pretty exciting to get a flash of inspiration.
4. Student poetry.  Yesterday the Creative Writers read their poetry out loud in class.  Actually, only a handful were brave enough to do it, but the ones that came out were wonderful, and at one point after one student had read her poem, I saw another student start to scribble furiously on his notebook.  Moments later, he raised his hand to read–he had just written a poem inspired by her poem.  And hers had been inspired by Robert Frost, so we left our own trails in those yellow woods.
5. Compassion.  How heart reaches to heart.  How a moment can suddenly turn to caring, to holding another.  I want to be more and more mindful of how a word or a gesture or a glance can turn a moment among people to an inner watchfulness, a heightened awareness of each others’ tender souls.

May we walk in Beauty!

Invisibility

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Scan_20150321
Yesterday as I was walking out of school, a robin began his spring song in the little tree in the parking lot.  This is Josiah’s robin from last year.  He has taped it to our living room wall, and expanded the picture onto other sheets of paper.

You walk on tiptoe,
keeping to the shadows.
Even your voice is hidden
deep in a pocket somewhere,
beneath a layer of gum wrappers,
tissues, and crumbs.

You have practiced the art
of becoming invisible,
of fading into the walls,
until you can step sideways
out of anyone’s awareness.

The trouble with many of the magical arts
is that there comes a point when you don’t know
whether you are casting the spell
or the spell is casting you.

It is time to let this one go.
Walk out of the wallpaper,
stop blurring your edges,
seek your lost voice and speak.

Speak your name into the room,
set your feet firmly on the floor,
and let the world see you.

Gratitude List:
(A list again today)
1. The robin in the tree
2. Digging a hole with a small boy to make a fire pit (though my hands really hurt today from all the shoveling and wheelbarrowing)
3. How you are beginning to let people see you
4. Drawing the line between us, which is to say–making community
5. Opening the bag of this day, to see what it holds inside.  Every day a new thing, eh?  What shall we make of this one?