Gratitudes

On Wee Horses and Caramel Custard

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1.  Those little foals up by Holly Springs on Mt. Pisgah.  How they dance across the fields, all spidery legs and joints.  How, when they turn and dash away up the hill, they are so skinny they almost disappear between the rays of sunlight.
2.  Caramel custard like Mom used to make.  I had to make some after play group this morning.  Yvonne brought caramel custard.  I was on my second (small) helping when someone laughed and asked me if I was really eating that dip by the spoonful.  Tasted like custard to me.  Nice and coconutty, too.
3.  Being a grown up.  Working on being a grown up.
4.  Okay, I have to talk about the Mockingbird again.  Because yesterday I caught him doing a hermit thrush, and then a vireo.  If he was trying to show off, he certainly impressed me.  What a birdie!
5.  This story about how poetry and art saved a forest.  About Poet-Trees.  And learning about Han Shan, who wrote poetry on trees and rocks.

May we walk in Beauty!

Please Don’t Read This Poem If Your Heart Is Feeling Tender

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 6 Comments

Gratitide List:
(first, in case you want to stop before reading the poem)
1.  Breathing in compassion.  Breathing out compassion.
2.  The helpers.
3.  A compliment: I will be the opposite of Cynicism
4.  The red open mouths of the tulips
5.  Getting to decide who I want to be.

I need a labyrinth today for going into the darkness,
and remembering to come back out.2011 June 227

I do not want to write this poem.
I need to write this poem.
That boy who died in the blast,
that one with large wide eyes like my sons,
I killed him.  Well, not him, exactly.
But that other one, the one
who happened to be where a Taliban terrorist
happened–oops–to not be
that day when the apricots were blooming
on the hillsides of Pakistan.
He was watching for his father to finish a race,
for his father to come in from planting his fields,
for his father to return from the next village.

I am so tired of all my murdering.  So tired of killing.
I am tired of this poem already, and I am only beginning.
Some days I see the blood everywhere:
on my hands, on my pillow, in the fields
where the spring onions are growing.

I pay my taxes, don’t you see?
That’s the whole story.

I have murdered my own children.
Well, not my sons exactly.
But sons.  I have killed so many.
And mothers.  So many.

Just like Mr. Obama has murdered his daughters.
He sent bombs from the sky
to kill them, to maim.
Well, not his own daughters exactly.
But daughters.  So many daughters.
And fathers.

Please stop me.
I don’t want not to write this poem.
I am so weary of killing,
of writing this poem, I mean.

I keep doing it, keep killing.
Keep sending my finches and bluebirds,
my tender little toad,
keep sending my taxes.
To kill people, children,
in faraway places.  My children.
Eyes so large, they want to take in the whole world.
“No more hurting people,” they all say.

I pay my taxes, don’t you see?
I need to stop writing this poem.
I am so weary of it, so very weary.

Yes, I know it was I.
I was the one who plotted and schemed,
who planted those bombs
like I plant my tomatoes.
Well, not those bombs exactly,
not those very bombs.
But bombs.  The ones raining death
from the blue sky to the hills
where the apricots are blooming,
raining down killing on children.

My own children.
Not my own.  Not mine.
But my children.

Please.  I need to stop writing this poem.

Look for the Helpers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Re-posting a poem I wrote on a dark day back in December.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers–so many caring people in this world.” — Mister Rogers

Look for the helpers.
I cast a line from me to you.
You cast it outward to those you love.
Fill that web, that basket, that nest, that bowl
with our open wounded hearts,
our prayers, our stones,
our candles, our feathers,
the fine white hair of our grandmothers.
Something to hold the children,
the mothers, the fathers,
a bowl that will witness and hold the grief.
We will be the helpers.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Breathing in.  Breathing out.
2.  The way people help.  Almost blindly.  Just running into the fray.  Goodness that goes beyond sense of personal preservation.
3.  The wonderful people who help us on Goldfinch Farm.  We have such a great crew.
4.  Great customers, new and old.  I feel so heartened.
5.  Mowing the grass.  I love to get out on that old riding mower and mow the grass.

May we walk in beauty.

2013 April 059
Mockingbird in Maple this afternoon.

Wonder on Tiptoe

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here’s another stream of consciousness poem from last month:

These are the doorways.  The passages.
These are the places
where wonder enters the soul on tiptoe.

Here is the speedwell,
up from the earth and smiling through snow.
The breath of the wind
on the ice-white wing of the gull.
Gull’s feather.
The beating heart of the honeybee
and the black lace veil of the monarch.
The moment of hush before sunrise.

These are the liminal spaces.
The cocked arm and quiet face
of a sleeping child.
The birth of a new idea.
The rousing of thought to action
and action to hope.

The hope that is borne
on the wings of the wren.
The way the weight of sadness
will slide away from your eyes
to make a little room for joy.

This is the breaking news of the heart.
First the aconite and speedwell,
then windflower and crocus.
These are the vanguard,
the silent scouts.

For the purposes of this poem
I will be equating gratitude with wonder
and wonder with spring.

Wonder enters on tiptoe.
A flash of impossible orange
flickers high in the poplar tree.
From the newest leaves
on the highest branch
comes a rustling, then a whistle
like calling a dog.
The oriole returns to summon the summer home.

And you–you may stand in the doorway
as long as you like.
Let that bright bird
open spaces for new joy
to fill the rooms
where sadness used to be.

Speedwell
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA


Gratitude List:
1.  Anticipation of the Northern Lights.  Sitting with the family in the car up at Sam Lewis with about 20 other carloads of people, we listened to The Stray Birds house concert on WITF (great music), watched a gorgeous spectrum of a sunset, tried to figure out the source of the funny fire-like lights near the horizon across the River.  Jon did call them the Aurora Boring-all-of-us, but I think he enjoyed himself, too.
2.  Going out for ice cream
3.  Really hot peppers on the beans
4.  Someone added a poem to the Poet-Tree today!  And I don’t know who it was–the boys told me later.  And the tree is a terrible mess–I haven’t gotten it tidied after the last rain.  Thank you for posting, whoever you were!  And sorry it was a mess.  I’ll clean up the context for your wonderful poem tomorrow.
5.  Jimmy Mack’s will give a 25% discount on the ice cream bill on April 26 to anyone who brings them a poem on Poem in Your Pocket Day.  How cool is that?  Local energy for Poetry!  Yay.
May we walk in Beauty!

Numinous

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I am really liking the word numinous.  Jon gave it to me to chew on the other day.  He will occasionally do that.  “Do you know what numinous means?”  And I’ll do my best to describe what I think it means, and then he’ll read me the dictionary definition.  And he doesn’t do it to trick or trap me–he looks up words that capture his attention, and then shares them.  He also gave me noetic the other day.  I like them both, numinous like luminous, and not dissimilar in meaning either.  Luminous, but more so.  And noetic like poetic, and also not dissimilar, but more scholarly, perhaps; the poetry of intellect.

2013 April 032

 

Gratitude List:
1.  This day, 26 years ago.  Pizza, pool, and a penny for good luck.  I decided that it was time to tell that cute shy boy how much I liked him.  Turns out, he liked me too.  He’s still cute, and sort of shy, and I like him a whole, whole lot.
2.  Flinchbaugh’s Orchard, you are so beautiful!  People, if you live near Ducktown Rd., you owe it to your soul to go sigh at their trees.   Springtime, you may be one tough goddess in your big old mud boots, but I can see your frilly pink petticoats.
3.  Rain.  The fields need it and it’s really beautiful and it makes me feel like I am in Scotland and it brings out the intensity of the colors of spring.  I can repair the Poet-Tree tomorrow.
4.  So many lessons to learn.  This may be turning a challenge into a gratitude.  I think I will never be an expert in matters of heart and friendship and interacting with people.  Sometimes I feel so awkward about who to be, how to be.  But that means there is always something to learn, always a new path to explore.  And for that I really am grateful.  Trying to be, yes.  And am.
5.  Good well-child checks today.
May we walk in beauty.

Ready for My Big Girl Boots

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’m gonna be bustin’ out all over, see,
and breaking the rules,
like Spring did when she came
stomping up over the hillside
in her kick-ass boots.
Spring, she’s all bluster and whoosh.

Did you see how she stood,
one foot on each rim of the ridge,
cocked her elbows akimbo,
flounced her frilly pink petticoat
and hooted and hollered
all over the hollow?

Because I want that kind of magic,
that fearlessness and fiercesomeness,
that wild-hearted yodel and galumph.
And a pair of those big girl boots.

Spring, she nodded and winked
at the wide-eyed rooster
on the weather vane.
“Tag!  You’re it!”
Then she skipped off to the River,
over the folding foothills of Mt. Pisgah,
spreading a carpet of green behind her.

(edited 3-17-14)

2013 April 027

Gratitude List:
1.   Sitting by the creek near this tree with a good novel (The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield) and watching my boy engineer dams and pools in the creek, catch crawcrabs.  He’s so sparkly.  Better than a nap, any day.
2.  Play group!  Watching the children grow.  That amazing homemade nutella.
3.  Freckled nose
4.  Making stuff
5.  Wind.  For clearing.  For inspiring.  For bringing a new thing.  For the gypsy ache to move and shift.  For music in the woods.  For words that blow through the woods.
May we walk in Beauty.

More from the Queen of Swords

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

I’m just a seer, not a sibyl.
Thing is, no one seems to get the difference.
Expecting me to know the future,
to sniff the wind like a wolf
and Know.  Like that.
What’s coming up the pike.
How the caribou are moving in the valley.
Whether someone is about to leave the room.

I’m really always the last one to know.
Call it the handicap of my profession.
So much lies outside my sensing.
Perhaps I am the wolf indeed,
smelling the rabbit in the underbrush
but missing the smell of fire
when the wind blows the other way.

The little breezes that blow
this way and that
and swirl around the valley,
they only serve to tickle my nose,
to confuse my brain.
I need a strong and steady wind
from one direction to get my bearings.

It doesn’t make me a liar
and it doesn’t make you a fraud.
But now I see what you meant
about the lonely tundra.

2013 April 025

Gratitude List:
1.  Forsythia:  Last summer the township butchered our poor neglected forsythia that they deemed to be growing too close to the road.  She took those wounded arms, laid them out on the ground, and dug her fingers into the soil.  So many little bushes growing from her wounds!
2.  More birdsong:  Screech Owl in the afternoon, and cuckoo, and woodpecker.  More more more mockingbird.
3.  Breaking the rules.  This is about poetry and then maybe it’s not.  Perhaps it’s about springtime and the poem I am going to write soon about her big boots.
4.  Fatboy Slim and Praise.  And love poetry, sensual and praiseful.
5.  The sun.  Did I say the sun?  Yesterday I said Vitamin D which means the sun and means that something is blooming inside me.  And oops, I mentioned spring in #3 already, but there it is again.  And did I say that I would be starting to break the rules?
May we walk through poems.

Everyone is Coming Home

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This morning when I went out into the balmy sunrise to feed the chickens, I thought a strange wren was singing in the walnut tree.  He had such an odd accent.  But suddenly instead of wren, cardinal was calling, then robin was clucking out a scold, then jay announced, “News!  News!”  And there, at the very top branch of the walnut, was my old friend Mockingbird, giving me the run-down of all the folks he’d met on his wintertime journeys.  He seems to have expanded his repertoire of languages.  Welcome back, Polyglot.

And the swallows and the phoebe were back last week, along with the pileated woodpecker.  I put nectar in the oriole feeder today in case that friend arrives in the next week or two.  I’ll have to put out some oranges this week.

Mockingbird is the inspiration for this blog.  When my own internal editor gets too demanding, I listen instead for the voice of Mockingbird, my new editor of choice: “Oh, just say it again.  Say it more forcefully.  Say it three times in Spanish.”  I think we’re going to have a very good summer, Old Friend.

 

This is me at 3.
Slides 108

Gratitude List:
1.  Mockingbird is back in the hollow.
2.  The peony stalks are pushing up above the soil.
3.  This phrase, that was in my head this morning, when I woke up: “The life force is wanton and indiscriminate.  Use it.”  It may be time to start keeping a specific journal of the words and phrases that sit in my brain when I wake up in the mornings.
4.  Taking it one step at a time.
5.  Good old Vitamin D
May we walk in Beauty.

Look Out the Window

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

My friend Mara’s poetry Prompt from last Saturday (I’m a late bloomer):  “Look out the window. Notice what’s there. Notice what’s not there. Write about it.”

Outside my window in the dying day
the little wooden spring house
is a smudge of white
set among the briars
at the edge of the little bosque.

Outside my window
the pear tree begins
to push its leaves
into being.

Like the fox that dashed
over the hillside in the winter
you have passed
through this place
and away.
I wish I could have offered you both
a place of safety.

April 045

Gratitude List:
1.  The bombastic and creative robot parade.  Hours of fun with cardboard boxes.
2.  Clearing away the vines
3.  Respectful disagreement, and how it helps me to be a better version of me when you respect me enough to disagree with me
4.  A new book of poetry is taking shape!
5.  Words, lovely words, especially adjectives: recursive, numinous, bombastic, noetic. . .

May we walk in beauty.

Gratitude for the Open Bowl

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

I have written this poem before.  The one about the Open Bowl.  How I will hold the circle of my heart to encompass it all.

Not just the little birds singing the dawn into being or the silent toad under her litter of leaves, not just the achingly beautiful green of the fields in spring or the blue eye of the speedwell, not just the snugglesome child or the soft feathers of a hen.

Not just that.  Not only that.

But also the brooding ache of estrangement, and the dull thud of the impossible choice, the anxiety over an ill child, the grieving of a friend.  Also the deaths of the bees, the scarcity of monarchs, the oil-covered ducks.  The deep sadness of all that we are losing so wantonly.  The rage, the helpless and blinding white fury at the destroyers, the greed-mongers, the war-profiteers, the glibly malicious purveyors of illness and oppression.

This is why I write gratitude lists.  I will hold all of these stones in the Open Bowl of my heart.  Some moments, the bowl is so brimming with the rages and the despairs that I don’t know if I can bear it.  And then comes a moment of pure numinous wonder and delight, not to erase the other things, but to ease them.  To make the bearing of them bearable.

These difficult ones, they are there for a reason.  I hold them, too, because they demand my soul’s attention.  They call me to my work here in the world.  I refuse to walk the world with blinders on.   But there is also so much joy to be found in the midst of it all.  So much joy.  So much love.

I have written this poem before, and I will write it again.  Perhaps every day I will write it, until I understand what I am writing.

Here are six shiny stones for your consideration:

Gratitude List:
1.  Green, green, oh the green!  Green says, “Have you been watching?  Have you been paying attention?  Surprise!”  Oh, yes, yes, and. . .
2.  Hello, Little Daffodil, whose name is full of goofy whimsy and whose cup overfloweth with sunshine.
3.  The spaces between.  I will gaze into them, breathe into them.
4.  Doubt.  And the places where faith and trust and safety rest even within doubt.
5.  An afternoon with my parents and uncles and aunts.  Putting puzzle together with Mom and Uncle Henry.  My father and Aunt Ruth and Uncle Harold playing harmonica trios to old hymns while the rest of us sang and hummed.  (“When through the woods and forest glades I wander and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees, when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur and hear the birds and feel the gentle breeze. . .”)
6.  The Navajo People, whose sacred phrase I have borrowed for my little daily prayer:
May we walk in Beauty.  So much Beauty.

2013 April 016