Oh, goodness. I am exhausted tonight. Here’s a placeholder poem. One of my rules is that the poems don’t have to be polished. I go into the month knowing, especially in November, that I will have some evenings when I struggle to function, and can only publish a little bit of fluff.
How the Day Closes In by Beth Weaver-Kreider
my brain is fogged in caught in the mists not even the foghorn not even the lighthouse not even the grim shadows can guide me tonight my ship is enharbored for the foreseeable future
Gratitude List: 1. Cats who want to be next to me 2. Thanksgiving Break is coming up 3. A brisk after-dinner walk 4. Salmon patties 5. The satisfaction of a good stretch May we walk in Beauty!
Yes, I know I wrote a “Spell to Tumble the Tower of Patriarchy” just a couple days ago. So?
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Heal the girl inside you. Remake the stories, and reel them back and back into time, where the girl, enthralled by Beauty, (not in thrall to power) enters the mouth of the earth, where she chooses her pathway, following the red flower of her own truth, her own permission, her own purpose into the heart of her own realm.
Give her agency. Give her choice. Honor her and listen to her voice. Look into the shadows through her curious eyes. Feel her power rise within you.
This time, when the gods come ravaging, rise with her in the door to the cavern, summon the tribe of fierce mothers of fearsome and raging cave bears, morning sun glinting on your ravening teeth.
Be the raven who guards the boundary between, become the hunter of the predators, take vengeance into your jaws.
Look for the terror to rise in their eyes. Growl. Give chase. Howl. An older magic than theirs lives here. A wilder wisdom feeds this older story.
They may not pass into your secret places. They may not enter your guarded door. Their reign of terror will shatter, shards scattering, raining down upon them.
Gratitude List: 1. Laughter 2. How my succulents are growing even in the dark season 3. The sun through clouds 4. Colored pencils 5. A little full-spectrum light to tide me through the season May we walk in Beauty!
Such a wind. Such a wild, wild wind. Corn husks spiraling down out of the sky, leaves rising in my rearview mirror like something out of a German luxury car ad, that move-along shove from behind as you walk from the house to your car.
A devil-may-care wind, a witches-are-passing wind, a scouring, powerful rowdy wind, the kind that could blow down the towers of injustice, pull kings from their thrones, and lay waste the structures built of lies. No house of cards can stand in the face of that wind.
Gratitude List: 1. The softness of milkweed fluff 2. The view from my parents’ new apartment 3. Rest 4. Smoothie for supper 5. Reminders to seek joy May we walk in Beauty!
Hiking the Chestnut Grove Trails by Beth Weaver-Kreider
It is both disconcerting and charming, the soft grassy pathways disarming the sense of disquiet, the riot of goldenrod, foxtail, and milkweed, native plants seeded along the human-formed hillsides
the wide expanse of grasses, ponds, brambles, and shrubs with scrubby trees and a diverse plantation of oaks. The smoke from farm and industry jar the view, but here too you can see the River, and an eagle gliding,
riding the thermals along the opposite ridge, can see almost as far as the bridge, and down to the dam, more emblems of how humans have transformed the landscape, bearing witness to hundreds of years
of human interference, how it all settles uneasily into these spaces of wildness and cultivation.
Gratitude List: 1. Good brisk walking on the hobbitiest of trails 2. The Susquehanna River 3. So many varieties of oak! 4. Time with a friend who understands my language 5. Cheese on toast May we walk in Beauty!
My friend Mara has challenged her online community to write a sonnet on the 14th day of the month. I will definitely try my hand at something more traditional some month, but today I was feeling experimental, and I read an interesting abecedarian today, so I thought: Half of 26 letters in the alphabet is 13, and if I emphasize the last two letters by giving them their own lines, then I’ll have the 14 lines necessary for a sonnet. Read across? Read down? Read on a downward zigzag? You choose the pathway.
Gratitude List: 1. Weekend–my energy for the work week was definitely flagging 2. A good long walk (on the treadmill, because darkness and cold) 3. One of my colleagues complimented my sweater today by saying I was rocking the 80s vibe, and I feel Seen. 4. Water–nothing like a cold drink of water when you’re tired 5. Experimentation and wordplay May we walk in Beauty!
He’s sure working hard to suppress the evidence of his presumed innocence.
What possible reason could there be, if he is guilt-free, to keep it hidden?
He’s bidden his stooges to silence, riding his sycophants for their loyalty,
expecting to be treated like royalty, trusting his privilege to keep him free
from the consequences of accountability. But the truth is circling ever closer
and he knows although he won’t admit that every century is lit up with the fires
of dictators and strongmen, tyrants and would-be kings spiralling down
to their inevitable ends, their deeds laid bare in the glare of a new-risen sun.
Gratitude List: 1. Re-establishing helpful practices, like making gratitude lists 2. The crescent moon in the sycamore tree 3. Soup 4. Tea 5. Big warm sweaters May we walk in Beauty!
I crossed the border into the Republic of Heretics, and discovered a savage and beautiful country.
I handed over my badge, my Confession of Faith, and my halo, removed my uniform, and put on a robe of ragged motley,
took up the pen and the wand, the seed and the bowl, and made my home in the wildlands beyond the hedge.
I ran naked with outcasts through ruined cities, and when trespassers came from the other world
we circled around them, stared into their rabbit eyes, and ran on in our wayward ferality. I had cast off shame
like outworn garments, had no need of the bound ones and their domestic pronouncements.
How I howled when the moon rose over that country. In this place, I can feel my bones, and the blood in the rivers of my body.
The first line of Liz Berry’s “Republic of Motherhood” in the current issue of The Poetry Foundation’s magazine Poetry arrested me, and I couldn’t stop thinking of it. Each new shouldered identity becomes a border crossing, a new country. I often felt like an outsider in The Republic of Motherhood, though it has been a joyful and fulfilling place for me. Still, I have never felt so much belonging as I have since I have taken on the identity of Heretic, and joined the ones who howl at the moon.
As I was working on my poem, I was caught by how quickly the synonyms for wild get very negative–savage, brutal, fiendish–and how the synonyms for tame tend toward blandness. The set which seems to break that mold, and which I want to work with more deeply in the future is unbroken and broken. Wild and unbroken, broken and tame. I like the word ferality. And wildishness.
Gratitude List: 1. Good company 2. YouTube videos that inspire art 3. My very creative and caring colleagues 4. Grace. Let’s all give ourselves a little grace today 5. So many good books to read! May we walk in Beauty!
was i chasing down a startled deer in the dawn or myself i chased
we locked our gazes for a moment or more then he turned and ran
he performed the role of hunted while i became this story’s hunter
how my heart lifted when he disappeared into the corn
Gratitude List: 1. The tang of pomegranate seeds 2. The curve of that wooden bowl from Tanzania 3. The thrill at the first line on a clean page 4. The promise of sleep in a couple hours 5. the satisfaction of a good, deep stretch May we walk in Beauty!
Finding the Way Through the Poem by Beth Weaver-Kreider
All these keys at my fingertips. Which will open the door of the poem? Which combination will turn this moment from a frenzied search through random rooms to a purposeful path through the maze?
Most days, I just begin opening them, door after door. Try this one, then this. Sometimes, I find a rhythm, a pattern to follow, a repetition, a thread of idea.
Or, like now, I feel myself reaching the dead-end of the hallway, time is running out, the patterns are tangling, and I have missed the essential clue.
I’m not looking for a way out. I’m looking for the way through.
Gratitude List: 1. My students. They’re witty, charming, thoughtful, wise, intelligent, brave, resilient. . . I have so much to learn from them. 2. Livestreams from African water holes. 3. I’m trying to keep my glucose levels under control. Today I realized that one savored bite of a Stroopy is actually almost as good as snarfing down a whole one. 4. Feeling more confident in my body. 5. Painting with watercolors. May we walk in Beauty!
I had a nightmare last night. As I have been sitting with the feelings, I keep returning to the fact that what was nightmare for me is reality for so many people today. There will be a reckoning in the after, and people will be called to account for their cruelty, whether dutiful or gleeful. There will be a reckoning.
ICE Dream by Beth Weaver-Kreider
They grabbed her, my oh-so-fierce and oh-so-fragile mother, and threw her to the ground.
Even in the light of day through the sheeting rain, beyond the simple sounds of the day, I hear her cry out.
I cannot stop feeling it, cannot stop hearing the cry, the crunch, cannot stop feeling the helplessness engulf me.
All these traumas we witness daily, the grandfather tackled, the mother taken away, the terrified and weeping children,
they’re all our family, all fierce, all fragile, all endangered by masked and violent men, bent on power and domination.
The cries echo everywhere. The yell, the crunch, the quick abduction. Our elders. Our children, our neighbors.
Perhaps I have not listened keenly enough to the cries, have not held with reverence the line that ties me to the disappeared.
I thought I was paying attention. All I know is that today my heart is shattered, pieces scattered to the winds.
Mockingbird Chronicles 