Gratitudes

Breath-taking

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

What an interesting word, that.  One of those that loses some of its value in its overuse.  Over-spoken and Under-thought, perhaps.  Today, my gratitude list is about Breath-taking Views and Scenes.  Places that make me pause in wonder.  That take my breath away for a moment.  But the act of noticing beauty also gives me breath, sustains me for the often difficult practice of compassion.  Breath-giving.

Gratitude List–5 Breath-Taking and Breath-Giving Views that I Noticed Today:
1.  The early spring view off Mount Pisgah, down over the bubbles of hills toward the River.  Green is spreading, but the leaves have not yet hidden the view.
2.  Heading East on 30 across the Susquehanna, looking toward Chiques Rock, with trees along the River frosted white from the morning mist, the poles along the railroad tracks sticking up blackly among them, and the charcoal grey hill and rocks rising beyond.
3.  A small oak tree, with its leathery leaves still clinging on, in a stubbly corn field, surrounded by tall yellow grasses like wheat.
4.  The very old stone house near the mall–probably once a mill?–surrounded by bone-white sycamores and weeping willows just beginning to don their spring green petticoats.
5.  Great blue herons patiently winging through blue sky.  Primal.
May we walk in beauty.

I realize my list is treeful.  Trees people my consciousness and my heart.
Soon the green will come. . .

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The Wheel is Turning

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

A poem from 2006, to celebrate the turning of the year-wheel into Spring.

Day Turns

The way maple swings its wings spiraling down shafts of dawn wind,
The way chickadee whistles on bitter March mornings,
The way lichen spreads grey-green lace upon the patient rocks,
The way the egg falls from jay’s beak to lie silent, cold, and whole upon the moss,
The way the wren defends her nest,
The way rabbit hints at her home and scratches the packed earth,
The way squirrel scolds her wayward cousin’s child.
The way heron stands more still than thought,
The way the pond reflects the orange air at sunset,
The way snake stalks the field mouse through gathering dusk,
The way the fields are washed in the milk of the moon,
The way dark midnight covers the farm like a blanket.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Those little trees in the understory of the woods, the ones that don’t lose their leaves until spring, whose leaves are wisps of yellowed paper against the mottled floor of the wood.
2.  Finding a nearly-empty (but not quite!) jar of Chocolat in the back of the fridge
3.  The many colors of potatoes
4.  Reading books with the whole family
5.  Writing it down
May we walk in beauty.

Not sure why it scanned so blue, nor why I had the impulse to post it here tonight.  This is my Great-Aunt Lizzie (Elizabeth Weaver–I am named for her) and my Grandma Weaver (Marian Weaver, Lizzie’s sister-in-law).  Quilting.
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Words, words, words

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1.  Books, words, books
2.  Tankas
3.  Sunset
4.  Compassion / lovingkindness / care
5.  You

May we walk in beauty.

 

March 2011–before we painted the barn red.
Snow then, too.

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For Glee

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

The list poem for a March Monday.  It will suffice for my gratitude list for today:

For glee
for giggle
for grin
for glow
for making snowmen in the snow

For dare
for desire
for delight
for dream
for things not always as they seem

For hilarity
for hope
for honor
for heart
for touch, and healing, and grace, and art

For breath
for blanket
for blessings
for birds
for building stories with our words

 

This is Ellis in 2009.  Today’s snowman is much smaller than this one, and today’s brother looks exactly like the boy in this picture.
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Noticing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I just noticed that there is a face in the shadow of the tree on the barn at the top of my blog page.  Just a little to the left of center.  Hmm.  Don’t forget–tomorrow’s poem is a list poem–perhaps a gratitude?

Gratitude List:
1.  Opportunities to practice the work I have committed to, even when it’s hard.
2.  Good music.
3.  Abundance.   Lavish love, overflowing hope.  Yes, even when I sit near or in the shadows.
4.  Children’s literature
5.  Process.  Step by Step.  Just because I/we want to be There at sometime in the future doesn’t mean we have to jump there today.
May we walk in beauty.

Make a List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I almost forgot that I was going to post a prompt on March Fridays for a Monday poem.  How about a List poem this time?  The gratitude lists that I have made part of my daily practice are often as much a poetic exercise as a spiritual/emotional one.  Join me?  Mine will likely be a gratitude list, but any list counts.  Due Monday.  Read Naomi Shihab Nye’s Prayer in My Boot for some good inspiration.

Gratitude List for Friday:
1.  Working together with other farmers.  Good hard physical labor.  It doesn’t matter that some of the others could grab two fifty-pound bags of potatoes off the truck while I struggled to wrangle one at a time.  It felt good.
2.  That I am no longer carrying one of those fifty-pound bags around as personal weight, like I was 12 years ago.  My knees are grateful.
3.  Moose Tracks
4.  Library Book Sale!  I can indulge my addiction to my satisfaction and the money goes to a good cause.  (Now to find room on the shelves. . .)
5.  Growth
May we walk in beauty.
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Susquehanna Alchemy

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I wrote this one about a year ago, perhaps two.  There is a moment in the morning when the sun suddenly hits the River with a flash of pure gold.

Susquehanna Alchemy
 
Fragments of mist
roll down the ridge above the River,
peeling the veil
from Pisgah’s grey shoulders.
 
Pockets of fog
cloak the farms
in the folds of the valley.
 
Susquehanna meanders,
a twisting ribbon of lead
in the dawn.
 
Above, a blue heron
plies a patient path
through cold currents
on its way to fishing.
 
Wren, sparrow and finch
send threads of brilliance
into the bowl of sky:
“Here. Here. Here. I am here.”
Their voices spiral upward.
 
A chilly breeze disturbs
the fleecy tail of a squirrel
who has paused
halfway
down a grey-brown
trunk of oak.
 
The wintry skeletons of maples
wear the green auras of early spring.
Sun touches the branches,
tempers them with silver
in the first light.
 
One day you will remember to look
and the fresh nests of birds
will be hidden
amid a riot of green.
 
You turn off the spine of the mountain.
You slide from the ridge of Mt. Pisgah,
winding your way along a streamlet
which hastens toward the river’s embrace.
 
A stone schoolhouse with boarded windows
sits amid a scholarship
of dried ivy vines
and last fall’s nettle stalks.
 
Among the wrinkled hollows and hills
you curve away from the river and back again.
Now you turn onto the river road.
 
Birdsong has lost the insistent shrill of dawn.
The last mist of morning
dissipates before you.
The sun slides a glance
off the surface of grey water,
and sparkles of gold appear.
 
Gold grows on the water,
transforming lead,
and in a moment
you will avert your eyes
from its blinding dazzle.
 

Gratitude List:
1.  Spring Tonic–the boys and I went wandering this morning, found several leaves of plantain, chickweed, nettles, henbit and ground ivy, stick-stalks of mint, sage and thyme.  We made a tea-tonic out of it all.
2.  Collaborative artwork with my children.  This photo is one Josiah and I made this morning.  It’s a cardinal family in a nest.  The red blobs above the nest are daytime fireworks, according to one of the artists:
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3.  Flaky biscuits and hot soup
4.  Being understood
5.  A new poet to learn: Ada Limon
May we walk in beauty.  So, so much beauty.

The Birth of Phoenix

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today I have been sorting through some old poems, to see which ones I still want to consider viable and alive, and which ones just deserve to fade away in my computer files.  Here is one from the late ’90s, when we lived in Slippery Rock.  I still remember the cafe where I wrote it the morning after I dreamed it.

 
The Birth of Phoenix
 
This is the story of the woman
Who believed that happiness
lay in the sound of Any-Man-At-All
slipping through her open doorway,
Who grew beyond bounds,
Whose walls dissolved in a grey mist
to let in a garden,
a star,
and a small silvery snake,
Who discovered the spiraling staircase
which led to the Aunt in the attic,
Who plied that old woman with indecent questions
and robed herself warmly
in old woman’s laughter,
Who carried the rage of the crone in her pocket
like a sculpted soapstone jackal,
Who suckled that fury–that ravenous infant,
Who knew a canary from plaster pretenders,
Who built her own cottage of clay, thatch, and brambles,
Who walked through the market,
unveiled by the eyebrows
of merchants and gabblers,
Who swam to deep waters
alone like a manta,
Who left the green waves for a road full of daughters,
Who shaved off her hair,
to step naked and newborn
among glowing embers.
 

 Gratitude List:
1.  Mid-day today, Ellis raced through the room (after 36 hours of intermittent up-chucking) and announced, “I feel so good!”  And promptly made himself a sandwich and ate it.  And kept it down.
2.  This image, which stays with me: The bluebirds at my parents’ house know that my dad goes out the glass doors at the back of the house to feed them.  On Sunday as we were sitting at the dining room table putting a puzzle together, one of them came and sat on the handle of the glass door, and peered around the door frame through the glass and watched us.  Apparently he often sits there to watch his friend drinking coffee or eating or working a puzzle.
3.  The release of a good stretch
4.  Eager new customers, and long-term customers who have become friends
5.  Planning and plotting
May we walk in beauty.

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Silly Song and Gratitude

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

“. . .and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing,
hi-ho, the dairy-o,
and heaven and nature sing.”  –Joss W-K

Gratitude List:
1.  Uncle Mallard floating on the pond this morning in the pouring rain.
2.  Choosing the exhilarating path rather than the bland one.
3.  Surfacing after reading an engrossing novel.
4.  A gift of bright red tulips!
5.  Earth, Air, Fire, Water
Namaste

Out in the Wind

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here was the prompt for a borrowed poem:  Because today is 3/11/13, I decided to go to a book near at hand, turn to page 13, scan down to the 3rd line, and choose eleven words to use in some form in a poem.  I sort of cheated, by looking through four books until I found one that I could work with.  This was Barbara Walker’s Feminist Fairy Tales, from the tale of Princess Questa.  I chose the phrase, “. . .went out to walk the dunes in the wintry wind, weeping. . .”  The final poem is perhaps a little overwrought, but it was cathartic to run with it, to see where it took me.  (This was to be March Monday Morning, but I seem to have trouble posting poems in the mornings).

Out you went in the wintry wind
to walk the dunes, weeping
with only a scattering of sandpipers
to witness, and a scuttling crab.

The wind tore the tattered foam from the waves,
sent shreds of lather scudding like sailboats
over the sands, and wrenched your voice from you.

You keened your word
into the force of the gale
a wail, like a siren.

The wind snatched it up with such unholy force
it sucked the breath right out of you.

But your word was carried like a seed pod
in the womb of the wind, to break open
high above all our fields, releasing
a thousand seeds to fall to earth
as the wind itself grew ragged
and shattered into calmer breezes.

We felt them fall, like a net upon us,
and now we wait, our breathing bated
to see what will grow.

Gratitude List:
1.  The perfect hexagonal symmetry of a purple crocus in the lawn, three petals curving inward, three curling out.  No wonder the bees find themselves at home in there.
2.  Sorted Legos.  That seems a little OCD, but something about having them all sorted into piles of color shifted the boys’ attention, and their play become more focused and cooperative for a time.
3.  Tiny green things poking up their heads in the greenhouse.  The way onions come up folded like laundry and then gently unfold into the sun.
4.  Corn casserole–yay for last summer’s frozen bounty!
5.  Courage for the difficult conversations.

Namaste

One way to keep the cats from actually sitting on the counter. . .

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