Poems

Look for the Helpers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

“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 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.

Up the Hill

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I wanted to try a more traditional form, so here’s a Rondel.  Three stanzas (ABba, abBA, abbaA, where the CAPS are the refrain lines).

When I walked this morning up the hill into the sky
bits of quartzite threw back the laughter of the sun.
A flock of crows flew east to west, one by one.
I breathed the golden air as I watched them fly.

Across the sparkling arm of the sun, they passed me by.
I watched transfix’d.  I watched until they’d gone.
Bits of quartzite threw back the laughter of the sun
when I walked this morning up the hill into the sky.

The sun, a million miles away, a single fixed point, and I
another.  Draw the line between.  See how it runs,
a purposeful and shining thread, artfully spun.
It drew me up and up, toward that golden eye
when I walked this morning up the hill into the sky.

 

And a Gratitude List:
1.  The Pleiades
2.  Bagel sandwiches
3.  Whoopie pies
4.  Pileated Woodpeckers, and the hope of the Ivory Bill
5.  Walking the road together

Namaste

I Keep Forgetting

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

It’s early (-ish) morning, my early-riser 3yo is up, the chickens have not been fed, and I am off to work in a couple of hours.  It’s been a few days since I have written a poem.  Maybe I’ll diddle something onto the page, just to keep up the energy of it.  I want to try another glosa soon, but that will take more time than I have at the moment.

These last few days I have been obsessively reading a book written by a dear friend.  She inspires me to not let it all go by without some work at capturing and interpreting it, making it my own, feeling out the meaning. 

If I have learned anything through the process of writing a poem-a-day last month, it is that often the moments when I think I am just tossing off a little bit of nothing into the air, often those moments are the ones when some little bit of magic happens.  Perhaps not the glossy, well-formed show-dog things, but I’m a fan of the open heart of the mutt myself.  (Though I am eager to train up a few of these little mutts from the past month and see how well they do in the ring.)

I feel a little lost without an external poetry prompt. . .

I keep forgetting to mention how your smile made my heart dance
on that grey day last winter
I keep forgetting to tell you how, when you said curtain,
I felt scales fall from my eyes
I keep forgetting my name
I keep forgetting the steps of the dance you showed me
I keep forgetting the words to that song
I keep forgetting whether or not I have already written this poem,
it has been so many days in my heart

Nine Stones and a Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Nine Stones

I gathered nine white stones when I went
to the sea, that windy threshold where sky meets
water meets land, and all is transmuted
by the fire of the sun.  Nine stones.

One for each of the dogwood trees,
gracious guardians at the entrance
to our own threshold.

One for the toad to grasp
as she sits in contemplation
under the litter of leaves.

One to place
between the clasped hands
of the lovers in their whirling dance.

One to rest at the bee-door
to guide them home from honeying.

One for wildness and courage,
to be the lion’s heart,
the spirit of the wood.

One for the wren
whose story overflows
and trickles over house and fields.

One to place at the cave’s door,
to carry as we walk within.

And one for the falcon
to clutch in her claws,
when she stands in the sky
and sees that singular task
among all that lies in the fields.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Insomniac child finally fell asleep again at 4.  I counted backward from 100 for him.  Need to remember that one.
2.  Tannenbaum so lovely and the magic of nostalgia for small children: “I remember this ornament!”
3.  Loving cat who licks my ears and tickles my chin.
4.  Advent.  Waiting for the light.  Hush.  Stillness.
5.  Mist.
Namaste.

Hunkered

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Poem-A-Day is officially over, but the poems don’t know that.  This one is a little silly, perhaps.

HUNKERED

Hunkered is perhaps the perfect word
to describe that red-tailed hawk in the walnut tree
surrounded by peevish crows
itching for a fight.
Hunched and hunkered.

 

The Milk of Heaven

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Poem-A-Day Prompt 30: Write about Milk.  This is the last prompt of the month.  I might take off a day or two before I get back into a poem-a-day groove, this time with my own prompts, perhaps.

Somewhere in the world, the milk is falling,
raining in great drops from benevolent heaven.

Cup your hands into a bowl.
Feel it splatter into your palms
and trickle through your fingers.

Wash your face in it.
Splash it over your eyes and you will see again.
Anoint your forehead and see further.

Pour it into the gaping wounds
where the frenzied creatures
of habit and risk, of anxiety and anger and hate
have gnawed at your insides.

Drink it in great gulps
and feel it soothe your weary voice.
Take it in, breathe it,
bathe in it.

Then lie back like a new babe,
and let it dribble from the corners of your mouth.
There will always be enough.

Through the Same Door

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

despise not small things

Day 29 Poem-A-Day Prompt: Write a Birth Poem.

We all came in through the same door.
The young ones just beginning to learn
what their bodies can do,
the new crones bidding the blood farewell.

And all those rounding bellies.
There were more of them than any of the others.

I sensed the wolf the moment I walked in the door.
I almost looked around to see her,
before I realized the shadow was my own.

Of course.

I stepped across the carpet
carefully toward the desk,
past the pair who sat together
with heads bowed in wonder
over the full bowl of her womb,
willing them not to look at me
lest they sense the blood on me,
lest some contagion contaminate
their innocent joy,
lest the wolf turn her face their way.

Me, I had walked this way before
with my strange and dark companion,
carrying my empty bowl.
I was only there for confirmation
this time.   I knew what I had come to hear,
knew how to follow this particular path of grief.

Walking out again, afterward,
the fresh-faced ones were still there,
and the wolf and I again took pains
not to taint them with our shadow.

We left by the same door
and closed it quietly behind us.

Which Mantle?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

Poem-A-Day Day 27 Prompt: Two-fer Tuesday.  Write a hero poem.  Write a villain poem.

Which mantle shall I put on for this story?
I have the capacity for both,
for small-scale heroics, at least,
and for minor villainies, too.

Find yourself in the slough
and I’ll come to your rescue.
But two steps in another direction
and I might take you down.

We choose the one path,
but the other will often come to bear.
Even Fagin had a warmth.
Even Arthur had his secrets.

Extra Tanka

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

I’ll post the Poem-A Day poem later.  Meanwhile, here’s a tanka:

I would stay indoors
were it not for seven hens.
Instead, bundled up
I step out into the snow
among the dancing bluebirds.

Title

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Poem-A-Day Day 26 Prompt: Write a Collection Poem about something you want to collect.

I want to collect titles, like the illustrious,
the megalotitulargrandmastermaniac himself,
Idi Amin Dada, His Excellency, President
for Life, Field Marshall Al Hadji,
you get the picture,
except he didn’t think you would,
so along with a collection of
interesting initials, he declared himself Lord
of all the Beasts of the Earth
and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror
of the British Emperor in General
and Uganda in Particular.
Yes, really.

Anyone who could greet him duly
must have passed out at his feet at the end
for very lack of breath.

Me, today I add to my title hoard
Conqueror of the Clutter
in One Small Corner of the House
in General, Queen of Two Cats
and a Flock of Grateful Chickens,
Field Harvester, and,
in this instance in particular,
Spewer of Grandiose Poetry.

You may bow now.