Poems

The Great Mother

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This is an older poem, one that I have pulled out again to put into my book.
Great Mother

I am the scent of dawn that rises from the owl’s feather
to awaken the floating moon.
I am the fingers of frost that vanish from the budded
branch, transformed by wren’s song.
I am the child of thunder, sinking into a purple
couch of sky.
I am the seed of the mountain that waits in the
memory of the hummingbird.

I am the tufted ears of the vixen, yearning to the footfall
of the field mouse.
I am the snakes of flame which slither through the dark
doorway of the ring of stones.
I am the lustful sermon of the bees,
earnest and ardent.
I am the wild eye of the star, silently observing
the wayward dance of the planets.

Have you seen me slip between the stones of the grotto?
Have you seen me winking in the coals of your sacred fire?
Have you seen me flash through the electric air of your dreams?

Oh search for me among the brambles and sharp stones on the hillside,
within the bubbling heart of the spring.
Listen for my name in the bluebird’s chortle,
in the whisper of wind through the milkweed.

I will be found.
I will be found.

Open your hands and search
within the wrinkled webs you carry there.
Grasp the shattered ray of light
which passes through the crystal’s heart.
Drink the shadows which surround you
as the day scampers away over the fields.

I am here.
I am here.
I am always here.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Honey Lemon Ginger Tea
2.  The gloaming.  The way the trees come alive in the dusk.
3.  People who care deeply about the Earth and Her creatures.
4.  Freshly vacuumed rugs and freshly mowed lawns.
5.  The fresh faces of dandelions.

May we walk in beauty.

It’s Really That Easy

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

“Why are you a Mennonite, Mom?” asked Ellis.
Because, I said, I want to honor my ancestors who died for this path.
Because I like the way we sing.
Because I want to walk this path of building peace.

“This is the way to stop a war,” he told me.
“Tell the people that we were not created to fight.
We were created to love each other.
It’s really that easy.”

I bit my tongue and did not ask
why he still fights with his brother then.
Time enough to absorb the subtleties.
For now, I’ll follow that golden child
and listen to his story.
It’s really that easy.

Gratitude List:
1.  Saying Yes.  Weaving my strand into the story.  Being welcomed.
2.  Largesse.  I like that word, and the idea.
3.  A tapestry of excellent conversation and tasty food and wine.
4.  A nap.  I felt as if I had shifted sideways into someone else’s reality.  Last year it would have been an unimagined luxury to lie down for a nap on a Sunday afternoon with a warm purring cat on my lap, but today my children could sort of end for themselves for an hour.
5.  The good quick-read mystery novels of Ellis Peters.  I am reading A Rare Benedictine at the moment.

May we walk in beauty.

Soft

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

for Leigh Phillips

Tell me something soft, you said,
and all I can think is the soft bellies of my hens,
the place on the inside of the elbow,
or the tender skin on the head
of the woman of Goose Creek
who has shaved her hair
and walked into her story.

Soft, like the ashes that have cooled
when the burning is done,
when you sift the remnants of the past
between your open fingers.

Even the word loss has a softness to it,
the rounded vowel, the soft hiss at the end.

Are there breezes in your Brooklyn,
soft whispers in the air?
Can you hear how a tree in Pennsylvania
murmurs with your voice
into the soft and tender wind?

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Noticing.  Today I have been thinking about the spiritual practice of noticing, and of all the ways
2.  My parents have taught me to notice.  How noticing keeps me conscious of
3.  The present moment.  How the present moment is
4.  The Exquisite Doorway between past and future.  How that transition from past to future is always taking place, as naturally as
5.  Breathing out and breathing in.

May we walk in Beauty.  Namaste.

Oriole is Home!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Sun shines through new leaves on the sycamore
then, high in the treetop,
clear, like whistling for a dog,
he calls.  Home again.
A flash of orange,
the truest orange possible,
and oriole has returned to the hollow.

Gratitude List:
1.  Oriole is home!
2.  May day party at the elementary school.
3.  Watching my 7-year-old painting the belly cast made when he was in my belly.
4.  Denise Levertov
5.  Reading A.A. Milne to the kids.

Namaste.  May we walk in beauty.

Bowl Full of Winter

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Here in the space between what it means
and what is brightly shining,
in the moment between breathe out
and breathe in again,
in the doorway to May

I have found the key to the door
of my grandmother’s old house.

Here in the thin space
between sun rays,
in the verdant corner
between the wren and the bluebird,
on the threshold between worlds

I place the key,
along with a small white stone
and the small arm bone of a squirrel
into my bowl of winter.

I have been pulling poison ivy
from among the honeysuckle vines,
plotting kindness to my neighbor,
watching how the wisteria twines
around the iron railing,
how it cascades into sunshine
like a purple waterfall.

Gratitude List:
1.  Reiki.  I saw so many colors during my session.  Such colors.
2.  People who support their local farmers.  I am humbled and honored by it every year.  Grateful, so grateful.
3.  The Gnomes of Goldfinch Farm.  They offered Jon the gift of a stunning clear quartz crystal today.  A twin, with double terminations.  Jon would say he found it.
4.  The way the wheel turns so lucidly into May.
5.  Fried Rice.

Namaste.

Conversations

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

The Things I Forgot to Tell Mara on the Phone Yesterday
and Some Things I told Marie in Email. . .

“and see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,”
–Jane Hirshfield

I was such a pleasure to take a little walk
inside your head with you
while this was sprouting,
these ferns uncoiling their sacred spirals
into the dappled light of the woods.

I forgot to ask you about the plural of tanka.
I think I will say tankas,
though to conjugate the Japanese in Latin,
to write many tanki,
would delight my soul.

I forgot to tell you how Ellis says
he knows the language of birds,
that the goldfinch told him
from the branches of the Poet-Tree
that it likes my poems.

I wanted to tell you about the Valley where I was going,
the place where my ancestors first lived in this country,
the way I feel as I am driving toward that place,
like a magnet draws me onward.
How I have decided not to put
the Weaverland Cemetery poem
into my collection.  How the demons in it have been exorcised.

I forgot to tell you that I am writing a new book,
forgot to ask how yours is progressing.

I love the streams where consciousness flows,
says my friend Bev.  I wanted to tell you
how I am learning to follow that stream,
especially this month, how I want to break words open
and see how they work from the inside,
the way Leigh does, and you do.

My sister quotes an expert in her book:
Take everything here as intended.
This is not fiction;
still, it is intended.

You will notice that I left out the but in that last sentence.
I suppose that still is a cop-out, but
I’ll keep it there and move along.

There is a scar on my belly
where my children were born into the world.
I have worked so hard on myself about that scar,
mostly remembering that it is a new opening,
a sacred space opened up for new life to enter the world.
When I don’t catch myself,
I find myself thinking of it as a reminder of my failure,
questioning, always questioning whether I tried hard enough
to bring my children to birth in the natural way.
Next time I start to fall into that chasm,
I will think of my proud flesh.

I have not worded the journey
in quite this way before.

Now that it comes down to it,
most of what I am telling you now
is things I have thought about today,
remembering the sound of your voice,
the delicate silences in your phrasing,
the poetry you weave in the music of your voice.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Oh, William Stafford:  “I place my feet with care in such a world.”
2.  Elderberry syrup and brandy.  I will not catch that cold.  I will not catch that cold.  And I will be very happy while I am not doing it.
3.  One step closer.  The day was filled with the magic of stepping closer to becoming.
4.  The dream of Grandma’s house.  For years, it was my most commonly recurring dream theme.  After the house was torn down in 2005, I stopped dreaming about it.  Yesterday, we drove through Blue Ball to the Weaverland Valley, past the garage that is now where her grand old Victorian house used to stand.  We visited her grave, and the graves of my uncles.  When we got home, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion, like something was calling me into sleep, and when I slept I walked through her house again, as always discovering rooms that I had never known were there.  This time I found things I had written years ago, found pieces of myownself that I had forgotten.
5.  Julia Butterfly Hill.

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.