Gratitudes

Un-Settling

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Faerie Tree

Today’s prompt is to write a settled poem.  Thought I would try a sestina today. This is in honor of all those who will be protesting at the Lancaster County government offices tomorrow, protesting the proposed pipeline that will cut through Lancaster County, dangerously close to the Susquehanna River and through wildflower preserves and wildlands and the beautiful Tucquan Glen.

This morning, a single shaft of sun
settles on an opening curl of fern.
A hermit thrush yodels, breaking the silence;
a salamander lays her eggs in a vernal pool;
trout lilies, may apple, and trillium come alive in the breeze;
and a gravid squirrel prepares her birthing nest.

Spring has settled into this glen, this nest
of a valley dappled with sun
where a dread new word is whispered on the breeze:
“Pipeline.” Listen to me, seed and egg and fern.
Hear me. Let the message sink into the pools
and the shadows in these hollows.  It shatters our silence.

The time is past for us to be settled and silent.
Safety will no longer be found nestled
in these hills, in these pools.
The trees will be torn out, your secrets open to the sun,
the yellow machines will crush the ferns,
and diesel fumes will waft on the breeze.

Tell it far.  Let it float on the wild winds and breezes:
We must not stay silent!
Awake and rise up like the unfurling fern!
Un-settle yourselves to protect the wildness.
Be fierce and penetrating as the sun.
Let action ripple outward like circles in a disturbed pool.

We must work together, pull together, pool
our energies.  Tell it to the breeze.
Marshall the forces of our hearts, our will, our reason.
Protect and preserve the settled silence.
Make it safe for the den, the perch, the nest,
for the spider, the swallow, the fern.

We want no pipeline, only the gentle swaying of the fern.
Tell them No.  We want to see the salamanders in the pools
in the glen, the intricate basket of oriole’s nest,
the wild honeybees, the lady slipper, the melodious breeze.
Tell them a firm and settled No. We seek the solitude and silence
of the unscarred valley dappled by the sun.

Gratitude List:
1. The snow of blossoms from the pear tree outside the window
2. The sound of rain on the roof
3. Sun salutations
4. There are always more choices
5. Taking action

May we walk in Beauty!

Monsters

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Today’s prompt is to write a monster poem.  We’re back to watching Mad Men on Netflix these days, season 6.  This one is sort of inspired by Don Draper, and by characters like him.

Vampire

Oh, that one.
He looked so dapper,
and spoke with such charm.
A family man, they all said.

He sacrificed everything
for his brilliant children,
and more for his wonderful wife.

He played it so well,
even she who thought she knew him best,
had no sense of the truth

until he’d drained her dry.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The smells of springtime in the hollow
2. Lush blankets of purple dead nettle coming up in the rows of stubble in the cornfields
3. Reading and reading and reading with my children–just finishing Jennifer Murdley’s Toad, another gift from one of our book faeries.
4. Memory and forgetting
5. Concentric circles of community.

May we walk in Beauty!

May the Waters All Run Free

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Yesterday’s prompt was to write a poem about water.  This is too big a subject for one day’s musing.  This poem will be a place-holder, an early draft.

May the Waters All Run Free

Remember your waters, children,
remember your waters.
Cherish the waters you come from.
Cherish the waters you belong to.

Listen, every day, for the flow,
the whoosh and shush
of the waters that run
in the rivers in your body.

Gather the waters that fall,
that run in streams down your roof.
Sprinkle them on the earth
and the thirsty green world
like a baptism, like a blessing.

Stand in the rain with your hands outstretched
and your face turned toward the sky.
Soak it in like a plant.

Find your rivers, your creeks.
Know them and speak to them.
Become a watcher of rivers,
a guardian of flow.
Tend them by your observation.
Let every river you cross
receive your attention, your benediction.

Remember your waters, children.
Remember your waters.

Immerse yourself in lakes and oceans.
Let water hold you, raise you.
Let water buoy you up.
Give over your control
to the arms of mother ocean.

Wander the borderlands
between the solid earth and water.
Learn the names and voices
of the ones who live there,
in the spaces between.

Walk back in your memories
to your very first waters,
the rivers and lakes of your childhood,
the ponds and the puddles and creeks.
Then walk further back and remember
the water you came from,
the amniotic sea where you were formed,
where you took shape.

Remember your waters, children.
Remember your waters.
May the waters all run free.
May the waters all run clean.

Last Straw

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Yesterday’s prompt was the last straw.  A little doggerel will do it.

I always can bear so much more than I think.
It takes a big shove to get me over the brink.

But watch out, little people, for the household law:
hitting each other is Mama’s last straw.

 

Meh.  So I wasn’t inspired to write yesterday.  I was inspired to read, though.  My mother sent me a bit of Rilke’s 9th Duino Elegy.  That’s worth carrying around in your pocket for a week or two.   I went to bed early instead of trying to write because we’re off to Lancaster this morning soon to participate in the YWCA’s Race Against Racism.

Gratitude List for Yesterday:
1. Fourth Friday in the Rivertowns.  We only got to two galleries, but we got to see a thoughtful exhibit of the work of Lloyd Mifflin.  I would love a print of one of his Susquehanna pieces for my wall.  Almost like Thomas Cole in its sense of a big, big world.
2. The Labyrinth Floor in the Jonal Gallery.  The owners spent months hand-burning and staining the wood to make it.  People create beauty simply for its own sake.
3. Rilke.  Always Rilke.  And Brooks and Lorde and Merwin.  And Oliver and Collins and Whitman and Piercy and Sanchez and Berry.  Poets.
4. Pushing myself
5. Making things.  Making our own lives.  Making beauty.  Making functional tools.  Making community.

May we walk in Beauty!

 

Talk to the Wind

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Today’s prompt is to write a “Tell it to the (blank)” poem.

Tell it to the fierce and rowdy wind, my sisters.
Tell your story to the little skipping breezes.
Tell it to the leaves as they scuttle down the mountain
to eddy in the shadows of the hollow.

Tell it to the mockingbird,my brothers.
Tell your trouble to the crow, the wren, the gull.
Tell it to the wild geese, whose message
will reach my ears as they fly above my valley.

I will whisper them to the willows.
I will reveal them to the prayerful gathering
of ferns unfurling by the stone wall.
I will wrap them in scraps of blue silk.

I will hang them from the branches
of my guardians, the dogwood trees,
and etch them on the leaves of the sycamore.
I will place them in bowls of glowing stones.

Tell it to the soft enfolding darkness
as the sun settles below your horizon.
I will watch for your stories by sunrise,
as the dawn washes over the hills.

P1020078

Gratitude List:
1.  Poem in Your Pocket Day: The farmer/poet’s heart is happy with all the shy children who came to read me poems in exchange for a packet of lettuce seedlings.
2.  Kind words, kind hearts.  Thank you, my friends.
3.  Fred the Cat
4.  Incentive
5.  That new featherbed–it’s like sleeping wrapped in a cloud.

May we walk in Beauty!

Saying Goodbye

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Winky and Fred

Nikhita “Winky” Weaver-Kreider (2000ish-April 23, 2014), left in photo

Tonight we said goodbye to our dear friend and companion of ten years, Winky.

Gratitude List:
1. A compassionate vet and nurses and office staff
2. Hundreds of swallows dipping over the River, catching insects and chittering happily
3. Two white snowy egrets, flying slowly upriver, low to the water, and then suddenly upward and into the sun of the dying day
4. Last night’s rainbow, the bridge for a small cat to cross on her journey
5. My cheer-up brigade: “Mom, Winky’s dead, but now she’s in Aslan’s Country, so she can talk!”

May we walk in Beauty.

Today’s poetry prompt is to write about a location.  I have a visual love affair with the photography of Kilian Schonberger.  Every time he posts a new photo on Facebook, I let my fairy tale mind roam into the picture and let it tell me a story of some sort.  Today’s poem is based on his photo of trees in a bog.  Look up his work.  It’s incredibly magical.

I saw the photo and his reference to is as being about “becoming and passing away,” and wrote the poem before Winky died.  It feels much deeper with meaning now.

Remember the day
you stood in the mud
at the edge of the bog

and watched the slow shiver
of the birches
reflected in the water,

how you saw
the faerie creature caught
there in the middle of the pool,

between the worlds
of visible and invisible,
how you waded out
into the muck to release her,

and saw–for the briefest of moments–
as she whisked out of sight,
the bright sun shining
through the door from the fields of Faerie?

Walking the High Wire

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Today’s double prompt is to write a pessimistic/optimistic poem.

this one is for the ancestors,
the mothers (especially mine),
and all my many sisters

We walk the high wire
between hopelessness and hope,
between rage and joy.
Perhaps it’s only stories
that will save us.

We pray to be empty.
We pray to let go.
We pray to give away
attachment to outcomes.

In one hand, we hold a golden cymbal.
Its name is Despair.
The one in the other hand is Hope.
We wander the Earth
like Cassandra of Troy,
clashing them together.
They make a mighty noise
but no one seems to listen.

We sit in the space
between the cup half full
and the cup half empty,
knowing that neither will save us.
We pour out that water
upon the Earth,
upon the seeds
which will grow,
or not grow.
We tend them
all the same.

The work
the work
the work
is what matters.

Hearts open,
souls on fire,
we heed Pema,
we heed Vaclav:
we work because
it must be done,
not because we know
that it will save the world.

Listen to Wangari
we plant trees
we free the prisoners
we honor women

Listen to Jane
we notice
we listen
we honor the animals

Listen to Vandana
we save seeds
we scatter seeds
we honor seed and soil

Listen to Natasha
we grieve and mourn
we witness
we honor the wild

Listen to Leymah
we speak our truth
we honor the scars
we heal

Listen to your mother
we feed and nurture
we protect
we honor Wisdom

Walk that thin silver line
between the flame and the fire.
Be amazed,
be feral,
be wakeful.

Walk between the heartbeats.

Listen to the Earth
Listen to the Earth
Listen to the Earth

 

Gratitude List:
1. The work
2. Wisdom
3. Carnelian
4. The ancestors
5. The mothers and sisters

May we walk in Beauty!

Back to the Basics

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Today’s prompt is Back to Basics:

It’s the original kit:
everything included,
just add water.

And perhaps to make it right,
a little soil,
a little sunlight.

Nothing more basic,
more primal,
more holy in its simplicity
and its intricate complexity
than a seed.

Strew them wildly.
Blow dandelions,
break open milkweed pods
and send them wafting
wantonly over the fields.

Scatter the seeds of the plantain,
joe pye, and stinging nettle.
Broadcast your wild oats
like hope,
like joy,
like a revolution.

Gratitude List:
1. Seeds, especially the apple seeds that are sprouting, the ones the boys wanted to plant.  I started to tell them how it would be useless because apple trees do not grow up true to type, blah-di-blah, and then caught myself: It is never useless to plant a tree with a child.
2. The Affordable Health Care act keeps coming through for me.  I realize it will not necessarily be so for everyone, but we’re certainly in that majority of users predicted to benefit.
3. Magic.  We started reading Jennifer Murdley’s Toad tonight.  When Ellis realized that Mr. Elives and his Magic Shop, from Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher, appeared in this book, too, he jumped over and hugged me.
4. The gift of sincere apology, and my children reaching the age of reason when they can begin to make sense of the social language of apology.
5. Open hearts.  So many open, compassionate, winsome hearts.

So much love.  May we walk in Beauty!

 

Ducklings

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Here are the links to my books:
Song of the Toad   Book Cover

Yesterday’s prompt was to write a poem about family.

Down in the wetland
where the creeks divide
and reunite,

a pair of mallards dabbles
in the shallows
of the swiftest bubbling waterway.

Among the grasses
of a little pool nearby
twelve ducklings

dip and bob,
muddying the water.
Up on the grassy bank,

wide-eyed and watchful
a young snapping turtle
bides its time.

 

Gratitude List:
1. All the fragile, tender life of springtime.  How tenacious it so often is, against the odds.
2. Stories of holy surprise
3. Rebirth.  Every day.  Every leaf unfurling, every flower opening, every bee in a flower.
4. Reminders, no matter how painful, to strive, to become more compassionate, to open, to open, to open.
5. How a little of of practice, every day, begins to develop muscles: yoga, piano, memory, compassion, letting go. . .

May we walk in Beauty!

 

Golden

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This morning, intrepid geologists Joss and Mama went searching for shiny white quartzite and bits of cubic Goethite.  We took the train.  “Here we are at Africa!” announced the conductor, and we were off across the savannah, searching for treasure.  We stalked a wild leopard for quite some time, until it came and rubbed its head against our legs, so we decided to keep it as our pet.  We came back from our journey, our baskets brimming with shiny stones, with two twisty roots that we found in the plowed field, one warm chicken egg, a little twist of coyote fur, and enough chickweed, nettle and dandelion to make a lovely pesto. Oh, and the leopard came, too, and howled at the door until we let him in.

Today’s prompt is to title the poem the name of a color and then write the poem.

Golden

First is the fire of forsythia,
constantly enkindling in the April chill.
Second, is the eye of dandelion.
Third, the fluted trumpet of the daffodil.

Fourth, the sunny yolk within the egg
in the nest in the sycamore tree.
And last of all, the turmeric hue
of the pollen carried by the honeybee.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Orange: Anticipating Oriole.  Soon!  Soon!
2. Red: Magenta sunset
3. Violet: Windflower, crocus, grape hyacinth
4. Blue: Eye of speedwell, Bluebird’s comforting mutter
5. Green: Ah, green.  Yes.  Green.

May we walk in Beauty!

Book Cover   Song of the Toad

Buy my books!  Here is the link for Holding the Bowl of the Heart.
Here is the link for The Song of the Toad and the Mockingbird.