Poems

Haiku: kigo and kireji

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

star
Reprising an old photo. 

Scholars of the old Japanese form of haiku seem to place less emphasis on exact syllable counts and more on the word-choice. I was reading this morning about kigo and kireji–the season word and the cutting word.

the little bowl is empty–
someone new is sipping
the August flowers

I think that the kireji is perhaps not supposed to be as obvious as the actual month name, but it seemed to add the the poignancy for me, though perhaps the name of the August flower would be appropriate.  Are there any flowers that bloom only in the late season? Somehow empty feels like an appropriate cutting word.

Gratitude List:
1. She made her first flight, although I did not witness. When I left for school meetings yesterday morning, Smallest Bird was sitting on the tiny twig right next to the nest, preening herself and looking proud and very brave. I stood a while and watched, but I was already later than I wanted to be, and I didn’t know if she was planning to take another minute or another two hours getting herself ready to fly. Safe journeys, Bright Bird!
2. Kyla made it through heart surgery without any apparent complications. She now has a Ventricular Assist Device which will help her heart to do its work. May her new heart come soon.
3. Yesterday’s anxieties look so much smaller in the light of a new day.
4. Little Cabin in the Woods with part of my beloved community.
5. I am going to go seek the labyrinth in the woods today.

May we walk in Beauty!

Making a Circle to Hold a Heart

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

heartstone
A safe circle for a heart.

Is it cold in the house of the hummingbird,
when raindrops patter softly on the sycamore leaf-roof,

when one small bird has dared the day,
flown upward through sunbeams,
trusting to wings insubstantial as mist?

The other no longer sits more quiet than breath,
but turns her head to the thunder,
hunkers deep into her mattress of cobweb,
waits for her moment to fledge.

Gratitude List:
1. One small hummingbird has dared the day and taken first flight. Safe journeys!
2. Anticipating a weekend and time with friends
3. My wise and earnest colleagues
4. A fine collection of Maine island stones, each with a single white line across, each one a little message about pathways, direction, and destiny, about joining up and making a way where none seems to be
5. English grammar. I happened upon a really fun sentence modeling exercise, which I did with a couple of classes yesterday. One student, who struggles to understand the structure of a complete simple sentence, read out the sentence he’d built, which included carefully placed adverbs and adjectives, two prepositional phrases, an appositive phrase, a subordinate clause, and three absolute phrases. He sounded so elegant and well-spoken, but most delightfully, he sounded proud of himself.  Here is an example of a sentence using all of those pieces: In the classroom, one laid-back teenager, a young man who often has no time for grammar, proudly read an elegant sentence from his writing journal as his delighted teacher listened, the words flowing like water, the ideas sparkling in the air, the class electrified by language.

May we walk in Beauty!

Roses and Honey

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Poetry First Song

Here is a revision of a poem I wrote last year. I don’t think it’s quite finished. It was pretty loose and free when I first wrote it, which doesn’t bother me, but I wanted to take it into a more mythic rhythm, if I could. I shaped it into something like a triversen, trying to keep the four-beat rhythm on each line–working with the four beats felt like the Kalevalla, and I want to try working more with that old Scandinavian feel.  I’m not sure yet whether it’s better than the original. I’ll post the original at the end of this post, and you can tell me what you think, if you want to. I’m open to critique–feel free to spill some blood upon the page.

Once upon a time, Child, when you were caught in the swirling fog–
remember how it held you, how it caught your arms and legs like brambles,
until you saw the wild rose bush beside the pathway in the woods–

remember how the roses dropped their scarlet petals on the ground,
how the tender centers swelled into ripe red berries,
a little sharp, a little sweet, and how they fed you, how they healed you–

remember how the golden bees swarmed around you as you wandered,
how you cried out in fear, how suddenly the wakeful sun
broke through the buzzing cloud: all was golden, all was sweetness–

remember how you heard the howling in the distance, closing in,
how the beast emerged from the wood, all teeth and claw, all hiss and fury,
how you quelled the urge to run, how you looked it in the eye,

how you spoke into its raging, “What is your name?”
I remember now, how you walked that day out of the mists,
a rose in your hair and honey dripping from your fingers.

Gratitude List:
1. Sorting sea glass, stones and shells with Josiah
2. Getting to bed early and only waking up twice before 5
3. Revising: poetry, plans, ideas
4. Wise people
5. Everything is going to be okay

May we walk in Beauty!

***
First Version of the poem:

Once upon a time, Child,
when you were caught in the fog–
remember how it held you, how it
caught at your arms and legs like brambles,
until you saw the rose bush
beside the path in the woods–

remember how the roses
dropped their tender petals on the ground,
how the center swelled
into those ripe red berries,
a little sharp, a little sweet,
and fed you, healed you–

remember how the bees
swarmed around you,
how you cried out in fear,
how the sun broke through the buzzing cloud
and all was golden,
all was sweetness–

remember how you heard the howling
off in the distance and closing in,
how the beast emerged from the wood,
all teeth and claw,
how you quelled the urge to run,
how you looked it in the eye
and said, “What is your name?”

I remember now,
how you walked that day
out of the mists,
a rose in your hair
and honey dripping
from your fingers.

Secret River

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

secret

Not sure what this is–fragment of dream, perhaps:

I have wandered these hallways, these corridors,
these rooms filled with shadow, filled with light,
since before I knew myself a traveler.

Gratitude List:
1. Poets in the streets. I love reading with the poets under the Poetry Spoken Here tent at YorkArts Fest. Yesterday was wonderful again. Someday, I will be able to just take the whole day and go and plant myself in that tent and let the words bathe and scour me.
2. I know I have seen the book before, but I never sat down to read the whole thing until yesterday: The Secret River, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. It’s a powerful fable/myth/folk tale about listening to your heart, seeking guidance, trusting your intuition, taking the inward journey. I started reading it to the kids and I knew it was going to go long, and I didn’t want to miss the first poet in York, but I couldn’t stop reading. “Her name was Calpurnia because she was born to be a poet.” You must read it.
3. Yesterday the boys were fighting about how to divide the bottle caps because someone wanted to make a project. Finally I took them outside and showed them two siblings who share a room the size of one of their bottle caps, no deeper than two of them. We all saw both babies, their tiny needle beaks poking out over the rim of the nest. Hummingbird babies grow fast!
4. Sleep. Rest. Quiet. Solitude.
5. Vegetables. August and September are such wonderful seasons for just going outside and getting the food that you’re going to use for a meal. I forage on the extras table for squash and peppers, tomatoes and okra.

May we walk in Beauty!

Wings Wide

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

hummer
Just a picture of green leaves, but if you look really closely and squint your eyes and cock your head to the side, about a third of the way along the very bottom of the photo, you can make out the silhouette of the mother hummingbird’s head, her bill pointing down as she feeds her baby.

For the Vulture

When you came to rest upon the pole
and opened your wings
wide to the sky,
were you holding up that cloud, or
warming your shoulders in the sun?

Were you warning the people in the valley
that death will one day visit us all,
or reminding us that all of life
is one great cycle, with no beginning
and no end?

I felt it as a benediction,
the pastor raising her hands toward heaven
and blessing her tiny congregation
gathered under the sycamore tree.

Gratitude List:
1. Hummingbirds. I know. Every day, right? But yes, every single day, and yesterday I trained my binoculars on the nest when the mother flew away and saw two tiny needle beaks poking up above the nest’s rim. Picture a metal bottle cap–the inside of the nest is only millimeters deeper than that, and two tiny hearts beat inside two impossibly tiny winged creatures who live inside that space. My heart keeps falling on its knees.
2. Friday. I love teaching, love my new batch of students, love seeing my earnest colleagues daily. And. And. I am exhausted. The first week is a glorious whirl. At one point this week, I found myself telling one class about another class’s deadline.  One the day when I was orienting all the classes to the use of certain computer programs, I completely missed a step in the last class of the day because I thought I had told them already–I had said it so many times already. That said–I am eager for the weekend of rest.
3. Poetry. My life is so much richer for the beauty of language that surrounds me.
4. Hymn sing. Friday mornings, the faculty gathers before school to sing hymns together. It’s the perfect thing to wake up the spirit for the last day of the week. What a perfect, perfect metaphor for the work we do together, to sit and blend our harmonies once a week.
5. Solitude. (I need to carefully find my moments of solitude in the new rhythm of my life.)

May we walk in Beauty, ever ancient, ever new.

Visitors

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

IMAG1733
Yesterday, just after Ellis and I got home from school, all four of us were hanging out at the picnic table, talking about our days, when a vulture (I think turkey) flew low above the poplar tree and settled on the telephone pole at the end of the drive. I managed to grab my camera, and just as I  raised it and got into position for the photo, she opened her arms and turned her head like this. Like someone from an ancient Egyptian papyrus.  Holy moment.

If you don’t know me, and only read my daily gratitude lists, I wonder if my life might come across as unbalancedly charmed and positive. Five things every day to be grateful for. Happiness, joy, contentment, satisfaction. It really is all there. But every life has its challenges and pain, too.

If this daily practice of inward-looking is teaching me anything, it is that the examined life must name and engage all the feelings and experiences that enter the heart.  And the practice of intentionally naming the gratitudes isn’t about ignoring the pain, or even simply putting the difficult things into context so that I can look away and only focus on the wonder and the loveliness. Sometimes it is about looking the hardest things in the eye and welcoming them in, too. Friendship and love bring us support and companionship and deep satisfaction, but opening the heart to others means that we share their griefs, carry their pain, open ourselves to the risks of broken relationships.  Noticing the hummingbird nest in the sycamore tree brings falling-down-on-your-knees wonder and daily magic, but it also makes heat waves and storms and predators anxious realities when your heart is filled with the fragile life of tiny birds. And wonder is not only the exquisitely impossible hummingbird, but the ancient bald vulture opening her wings in the sun.

My favorite poem on this topic is Rumi’s “Guesthouse”

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

Gratitude List:
1. The vulture visitor
2. Yesterday I finally saw a hummingbird baby peeking a tiny head over the rim of the nest after the mother flew away. First a tiny ruffly wing, then the needle beak, then the round marble of a head–smaller than a marble! My heart fell down on its knees.
3. Welcoming it all, open-winged, like the vulture on the pole
4. Challenges that keep me from complacency
5. Fierce and tender mothers. My sister friends, holding each other through difficult times. Hummingbird.

May we walk in Beauty!

What Will You Write?

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IMAG1695

What will you write on this page,
a blank ocean of white before you,
waiting for your mark?

The words and the images you lay upon this day
you will write with your grandmother’s pen,
with drops of blood from your fingertip,
with the blue quill of a wingfeather
dropped on the wind
from a passing jay.

Will you write joy? Will you write patience?
What will you write when grief
appears upon the page?
How will you work
around the stains of tears and sweat,
of oil and the smudges of your daily labor?

Let your words be beautiful and terrible,
your images shining and crisp,
your actions ancient,
yet newer than the fragments
of blue eggshell in your cupped hand.

Gratitude List:
1. This blank page of a school year beginning
2. My earnest and compassionate colleagues
3. The Shining Ones who will walk in my doorway today
4. The Work: Love and Learning. Love of Learning.
5. Bridges. Every moment is a bridge.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Only Way In Is In

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2013 August 348
The only way in is in.

Here is an old poem of mine. I am not feeling knife-edgy lately, but perhaps you are:

Some days
you feel as though
you have been walking that knife edge
forever,
too afraid
to look to right or left.

Then one day,
you raise your gaze
and there before you
is the green valley
with a blue glass lake
and a silent island
that you have been seeking
in every dream
since you were born.

Gratitude List:
1. Sweet yesterday. The last day of summer for me. Weekends don’t count. Yesterday was a weekday, the last free day of the work week before school begins. Teachers return on Monday, and we welcome the Bright Ones back on Tuesday.  I do love what I do, what we create together at school. Still, these lovely days–no matter how busy they get–of loosely planned rhythm, are sweet and wonderful.
2. Anticipating new rhythms. No matter how sweet the days of summer, something in me also longs for the formal rhythms of the school year.
3. Balance. I think this will be the theme of my school year this year. Particularly with the packs of grading that come in. I have a color-coded calendar all ready so I can visually see when the bigger papers are due.
4. Learning to know my own brain. I know that I am a visual learner, that I often have to see a word or a musical score or a fact in order to “get” it, even if seeing means visualizing it in my brain. When I meet a new person with an interesting name, I spell it out on the screen inside my head so it is easier to remember. Those color-coded calendars are part of my plan to work with the quirks of my brain this year, to give myself the necessary visual cues to get my work done more efficiently.
5. Cicadas. Yesterday, I stood and listened to the concert for a while. When I just move through it without thinking about it, it’s a confusing roar, but when I stop to listen, I can hear one band to the left starting to gear up, while the band in front of me is at full roar at a slightly different pitch. To the right is a third, reedier-sounding gang, trying to meet the roar in the middle, but fading out. What an amazing idea the cicada is–the seasonality (not just annual, but seasons of years at a time), the shells and wings and awkward flight bodies, the roaring.

May we walk in Beauty!

Stand Still

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garden peach
Garden Peach tomatoes. Sweet, juicy, almost fruity. These two happen to be heart-shaped.

Reading Parker Palmer this morning, I again came across this poem by David Wagoner. I had such a strong reaction to this when I first read it a couple years ago that I can still recall how my skin felt as the words took hold.

Lost
by David Wagoner, from Collected Poems 1956-1976

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. you must let it find you.

Gratitude List:
1. She might not be gone. I was certain that the hummingbird had left her nest, either abandoning her eggs as unviable, or getting too skittish about all the activity below her. This is the sort of thing I worry about. Yesterday, I watched her zip up to the nest, and instead of sitting on it like she usually does, she perched on the rim, and stuck her beak down into the nest. I can’t be positive, but this appeared to be the behavior of someone feeding young ones. Holding out hope.
2. Jumping spiders. They’re sort of like teeny tiny puppies, only you don’t have to worry about who is going to take care of them. Yesterday, I encountered a tiny brown jumping spider who kept leaping from finger to finger. It was like she understood where I wanted her to jump to next. She would race toward me across the vast distance of my hand, and then look up at me, and then when the people at the picnic table laughed, she would suddenly stop and twist her body so she could look at them, and then we would resume our little game.
3. The village that raises the children. My kids hadn’t seen Sandra for several weeks, and yesterday when she came, they raced to her and couldn’t stop bending her ear. She listens to them, she converses at their level, but never talks down to them.
4. Also, the schools. Last night was Back to School night at Wrightsville Elementary. I love the teachers and administration and staff at this local elementary school. I love the friendly, earnest culture of the place.
5. Encountering Beauty–in words, in the visual realm, in the aural realm. Sort of like encountering that little spider–there are moments when Beauty seems to say, “I get you. I am here to play with you for this one bright shining moment.”

May we walk in Beauty!

Photobomber

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

bridge4

“What comes, will go. What is found, will be lost again.
But what you are is beyond coming and going and beyond description.
You are It.”
—Rumi

Gratitude List:
1. Lemons and limes, which is to say: that which refreshes.
2. Bumblebee photobombers, which is to say: that which surprises and delights.
3. The Sufi poets, which is to say, that which deepens and enheartnes.
4. The great-horned owl in the poplar tree, which is to say, that which awakens and reminds.
5. This fuzzy fellow sleeping here beside me, which is to say: that which trusts and belongs.

May we walk in Beauty!