After all is said and done, when you’ve won the battle, when you catch your breath and stretch your fingers to the sun,
will you still believe in all the words and songs that led you to your path? Will you remember all the guides who walked beside you in the lonesome days?
Will you praise the small coincidences of the wayside trees that brought you comfort, and the sort of incidental shining stones that made a trail for you to follow?
After the dust has settled, after the room has stopped spinning, after the dice have rolled the magic number, will you stumble onward blindly
in the noonday glare, or will you pause and rest a moment, give a knowing glance toward the river and the willows, the pebbles and the flaming trees of spring?
Will you sing a grateful poem to the day? Will you kneel? Will you build an altar? Will you dance? Will you pray?
Gratitude List: 1. Phoebe calling 2. Bluebird muttering 3. Fixing things 4. Water 5. Poeming
I drew this back at the end of February, when I finally began to feel that awful weight of winter shifting just the lightest bit.
Today’s prompt on Poetic Asides is to write a stolen poem. Here’s my attempt:
Poetry Prompt: Write a Stolen Poem
I stole this poem years ago, actually, from a shelf in a corner of that old book shop on a quiet street down by the river. Dust motes twinkled in shafts of sun which slanted through the windows.
I eased the leather-clad book from a high shelf. I thought I heard it whispering. My fingers tingled with its electric pull.
I knew it would contain treasures: words like glisten and linger, like numinous, mellow, meringue. I thought it might glow on the page, hum my name, offer me words to ponder: tendril, exquisite, winsome, wander. And words strong and feral, like flame, wild, and bramble, courageous, incarnate, sycamore.
I thought it might tell me how not to be afraid, how to not put so much stake in other people’s opinions, how not to trust the lure of the the easiest road.
It did not disappoint. I’ve kept it, concealed, waiting for the moment, the right invitation, to reveal it.
In today’s prompt, Brewer suggests titling a poem with the name of a painter and then writing the poem.
Artemisia Gentileschi
The magical properties of artemisia absinthium include the opening of the third eye, general enhancement of psychic awareness, profound protection, and the banishment of anger and negativity. If you steep it in your vodka with some anise and fennel, you might see a fairy dressed in green.
The name didn’t save her, though, unless it brought her the visions, showed her the most vibrant color for blood, gave her the fire to hold to her truth when they tightened the screws to her artful thumbs.
The paintings are angry enough– there’s little evidence that emotion was banished from her soul, but Judith’s eyes hold something else– a knowing? a determination? a getting down to business?–as she severs the general’s head. And her handmaid is equally attentive to the task. They could be butchering a cow.
Likewise, Jael looks meditative as she holds the hammer aloft to drive the spike into the skull of Sisera. She could be gazing into the watery vision of a crystal ball or tucking in a sleeping child.
That anger, unbanished, transformed itself to purpose, exposing the sins of the patriarchs, showing the bloody strength of women doing what must be done.
Her colors were her arsenal, those tortured hands wielding her paintbrushes like weapons. She mined the hidden stories of the Bible to tell and retell her own story: observer, victim, vanquisher, and hero. In the end, perhaps, her name revealed the layers she could look into.
Lichen on a branch like a lace doily on the arm of a grandmother’s chair.
Brewer’s prompt today is to write an animal poem. As usual, when I leave the poem until the end of the day, my mind has scrambled down too many tunnels to form a coherent poem.
On the green carpet, a golden patch of sunlight. A question-mark cat.
It’s another April. This year, grades were due at 8 a.m. on April first, so I didn’t even consider Poem-a-Day until after I’d muddled my way through the day, taken a nap, and eaten supper. But here I am. It’s a strange compulsion, this drive to write a daily poem, knowing that the next four weeks will have their own share of other stresses, that there will come a day, mid-month, when I will hate the way poetry is holding the whip above my head, when I will write a grocery list and call it a poem, just to get through the day. But now, on the first day of the month, everything seems bright and shiny, and I feel up for anything.
Brewer’s prompt today is to write a morning poem. I worked up a photo of this morning’s magenta cloud in a blue sky to go with it.
Finishing the Grades
The battle cry of yesterday’s ghost startled me into morning at precisely 4:38 according to the clock, and as I couldn’t wrestle the monster back into oblivion, I strapped on the day like a rusty sword and went downstairs in the chilly dark, to coffee and a blue screen, to the silent dread of numbers on a page, and the certainty of this day’s wave of work receding, while the pull of the next wave began its undertow toward the rising sun.
During the season of Lent, the worship materials for the Mennonite Church suggest a more ritualized confession time, not particularly about confessing sin, but expanding it to confess what we believe. As part of the ritual, a few people each week are asked to come forward and bring their confessions in the form of a poem or a piece of art or a story or a reflection of some sort. Today, I have been asked to be part of the ritual, answering the question: “Who will trust in God today?” Here’s my poem:
Whom shall we trust?
When hurricanes and charlatans
destroy the weak?
When the meek are set
to inherit a world laid waste by greed?
When human need bats last,
long after lust for money, sex, and power?
Whom shall we trust
in this hour when so much has been lost?
When the cost seems too high
for such a simple thing
as resting in belief
that the Holy One has time
for grief about our trials and tribulations.
The pillars of the past no longer hold.
They’ve had feet of clay all along,
and wrong upon wrong upon wrong
has brought the ancient houses down.
There’s no more room here for illusion.
How, then, shall we trust?
Shall we just ignore the lancing fear
that tears our sense of safety from its moorings?
That bears us outward into territories
we’ve not known before?
Perhaps it’s not a matter
of ignoring what we face,
but rather an attempt
to place our anxious thoughts
within the context of the Greater Power.
I will put my trust in Mystery, in that ineffable presence we call God, in the Knowable Unknowing, and in the One who put on shoes like us and trod the roads we walk, and spoke as one who knew the course of human suffering. I’ll trust us to the Holy Wind of Spirit, who hears our songs and knows our fears, who causes us to rise, though we resist; in our resistance fills our sails, the wind that pulls against the kite and makes us rise to higher height.
Perhaps nothing can be truly known, no comfortable future gardens sown with seeds of certainty. But we can trust the certainty of seed, the trusty breeze of Spirit and the rains of the Creator on these fields we bear within us.
Gratitude List: 1. The Little Sisters buzzing for pollen among the crocus and anemones 2. A fun afternoon of pond play yesterday with my kid 3. This man who makes the most amazing birthday cakes 4. The opportunities for my soon-to-be-teenager to learn to do the tech things he loves 5. Summer break is on its way
We are two days in to the season of Awakening, of Hatching, of Breaking Open. Two days in, through wind and sunshowers, through gusting rain and rushing cloud. Last year, on the second day of spring, a foot of snow fell in the hollow. This year, a seemingly endless drench of rain.
In the season of Brigid, back in February, we felt the Earth stirring, noticed the sap rising, watched pull toward birth and sprouting. Now we feel the promise, watch the winter aconite drop seeds for next years golden cups, and Persephone’s footprints–all shades of crocus–springing up across the lawns, uncontainable by flower beds.
What, in you, is hatching now? What thing, which has lain long and silently within you like a seed in the darkness, now seeks the sun and breezes? Hold that thing within you, like a seed. See the rough, hard casing which has protected it in its dreamstate. Breathe in the sun of spring, the chill air biting as it enters, and feel your lungs, your belly, your capacity, expand. Watch the casing of your dreamseed break open, and feel the roots push downward within you. Feel the sprout nosing upwards to the light and warmth of spring. What is being born within you? What new capacity? What new heartspace? What plan and purpose? Blessed be your seeds. Crack open. Seek the sun. Feel the rains of spring caress your growing roots.
Gratitude List: 1. The groundhog who is nosing around on the hillside behind the house 2. A day off, to ponder and paint, and catch up on the work 3. The fog of winter is lifting 4. Watching the children grow and become so gallantly themselves 5. The seeds which are sprouting
Every storyteller knows you have to find your pacing. You might fill that page with skin-of-their-teeth escapes, but eventually, you need to get your hero to Lothlorien, or back to the arms of her friends, or into the warm presence of Aslan.
Pace your story. Find your way through the nail biter, and then descend into the valley of your Rivendell: tea and silence, a quiet book, a walk beside the river, an evening in company with your best beloveds.
Do you feel how the world comes alive?
How even underneath its coat of snow,
inside the bright crystals of the ice,
something in the Earth is stirring?
Within your own eyes I see it rising–
in this breath,
and now this one–
the Dreamer is awakening.
The dawn has come,
spreading its golden road before you,
asking, “Will you step upon the pathway?”
As you move out onto the road, Brigid’s sun upon your face will trace your outline full behind you, defining you in the Shadow which will be your soul’s companion into spring.
–2018
Brigid’s Day has dawned bright and sparkling. The groundhog and her rodent kin have seen their shadows. The crone can merrily wander through the woods edge and hedgerows to gather firewood for the next six weeks of winter.
And here’s one of the sacred truths of the moment: If I’m willing to look deeply into the reality of my own shadows, if I’m willing to know them, to understand how they reflect me and show my inner realities, then I have nothing to fear from the shadows. I have nothing to fear from the coming weeks of winter.
Yesterday after I got home, I went out to shovel the drive so it would be easier for Jon to get up the slope. My neighbor came out to help me. She loves to shovel snow, she said. She loves winter, especially when it’s cold and snowy. And for those moments with her, shoveling and talking together, I too loved the cold and the snow. For the beauty, for the exercise, but mostly for the neighborliness.
Questions to Contemplate in the Season of Brigid This is the season of sunlight and shadow: What is the shape of my shadow? How does it hamper me? How does it hold me? How does it tell me the shape of my soul?
Brigid is the Smith, she who works the forges: What within me is being tempered this season? What is being shaped and shifted? What sacred patterns are being traced along my edges? What useful tool am I being forged to become?
Brigid is the Healer. The waters of her well bring wholeness. What spaces within me need the touch of her waters? What dis-ease drains my vitality? How can I offer the waters of healing to others?
Brigid is Patroness of Poets. How do words shape my reality, like iron is shaped in the forge? How do my words bring healing, like water from the well? How can I speak poetry into the cold and the shadows of the season which is upon us? Can I offer my daily words with the care and the artfulness of the poet?
A few somewhat random thoughts, some drawn from yesterday’s discussions: * Just as I want to loosen my attachment to the physical stuff that bogs me down and overwhelms me, I want to loosen my attachment to my sense of the infallibility of my perceptions. Admitting that my own perceptions may be fallible does not mean that I am relinquishing my core beliefs. * About that loosening of attachment to stuff: Tidying, de-cluttering, un-hoarding, relinquishing–all this allows me to actually deepen my delight in the Beauty that surrounds me. * In much the same way that loosening my attachment to stuff allows me to see Beauty more clearly, perhaps loosening my attachment to my righteous rage might allow me to see the complexities inherent in moments of injustice. * I learned about Anonymous Collective Rage from a friend yesterday. I think I knew what it was, but I didn’t know it had a name. While I would never join those who write threatening letters and who call for violence against the young men from that school, my own immediate rage was part of the collective pile-on. I feel some shame at my quick leap into the fray. Still, that rage is born of a sense of justice and a desire to bring change. * There are not two sides to racism or misogyny, or to mistreatment of elders. While events like the one that occurred in DC on Saturday might be more complex than they first appeared, disrespectful treatment of others based on their age or their race is unacceptable. Always. * Could people who are experts in restorative conversations, in rebuilding peace in tense situations, offer to help moderate conversations between those boys and Mr. Phillips and his group? This could be a time for real healing and learning. * I think that the time of Catholic boys’ schools is pretty much over. Time for a new model. They seem to simply be training schools for the patriarchy.
Gratitude List: 1. Yesterday’s time off. I needed the rest. I always need the rest. 2. Tidy drawers with clothes folded so I can see everything at once. Now I look forward to getting dressed instead of hating putting clothes on. I hope I can sustain it. 3. The lines of tree-shadow cast by the morning’s moon 4. That red eclipse 5. This is going to be a really busy semester for me–I have more preps than is ideal, but I love the classes I am teaching, and I love the kids in them. Last year was my first year teaching Speech, and although it wasn’t bad, I just didn’t quite have a handle on it. This year, I feel like I am much more able to pin down the perfect resources. Of course, I am only one week in, but already the course is taking shape with greater liveliness and interest.
May we walk in Beauty!
fire and flight
“In writing, and perhaps all endeavours, there must be a way which doesn’t simply do as men before us have done, but turns to its own erotic authority. The feminine voice comes from the body’s knowing. It is the writing of aches and ragged breath and dirty fingernails from climbing out of the underworld. It is the sonority of our words which is primary, not their definition. This voice is the howling of a child for its mother before language is even learned. It strives not for the objectivity which is removed from feeling, but rather sinks us deeper into the muck of it. It takes things personally. And it gives personally in return. There is no such thing as impartiality when you live in a body. And it speaks from the flesh and bone rhythms of that first belonging.” —Toko-pa Turner
“A noise annoys an oyster, but a noisier noise annoys an oyster more.” —Anonymous
“…The green earth
is your cloth;
tailor your robe
with dignity and grace.”
—Rumi
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” —Thomas Jefferson
fire and flight
after the fire
has kindled
within you
patient gestation
of coals beneath
your heart
between
your ribs
fire within you
fire in the earth
fire in the fruit
the egg
the seed
flames will burst forth
and you will rise
you will know
your wings
you will
open your feathers
catch the breezes
the old world
of magic and monsters
will fall away
below you
you will dance
on pillows of cloud
you will swim
in rivers of air
you will hear your
true name
in the voice
of the wind
—Beth Weaver-Kreider
Mockingbird Chronicles 