Poems

Beads, Like Grace

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

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Slipping into the arms of an old friend,
I pulled back to look in her shining eyes,
and my beads went skittering over the floor,
heart beads, rose quartz and green aventurine,
so much that has been held back
no longer contained,
scattering like grace
underfoot
and into every corner
ready to be found
by you.

Gratitude List:
1. Beads scattering everywhere, shattering something that needed to be opened
2. Time to just hang out with my colleagues last night, and meet potential new students
3. Weekends
4. This red woven scarf–recycled silk saris.  What life did they live before?  Who was beautiful in these shining threads?
5. The sun is returning.  (Blessed be.)

May we walk in Beauty!

True Names

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2013 April 004

I gave my students in Creative Writing an assignment to create a collage and then write a short story or poem or essay that was sparked by the images that came together.  The idea was to begin the semester by unhitching the horse of the brain from the writing process for a moment–letting the creative urge impel them–and also to get them working with images right away.

I haven’t taken a photo of my collage yet, but here is the poem I wrote in response to them (I always seem to make two collages at a time).  A friend of mine recently turned me on to Francisco X. Alarcon’s poetry (he died a couple days ago), and I am finding the simplicity of his work to be incredibly powerful.  I cannot quite get myself to simplify enough to really be Alarconesque, but it was a powerful poetic experience to work in his style.  Also, we have been working with models of professional writers as a way to spark creativity, and we were working with an Ursula Le Guin short story about True Names, and that also found its way into my poem:

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

Gratitude List:
1. The promise of snow.  (I know, it causes anxiety, too, not knowing what will happen, but I look forward to being cocooned in the house for a time.)
2. Making collage.  Perhaps it was an entirely personal agenda to give that assignment, but I had fun making my own collages.
3. Lights at ends of tunnels.
4. Taking root.  Taking flight.
5. True Names.  One of your True Names is Beloved.

May we walk in Beauty!

Blessing

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2013 May 051

Here is a poem from this day in 2013.  It’s one of my favorites.

May the bright breeze of morning rouse your heart to singing,
May the fire of the noonday warm your heart to hopefulness,
May the cooling rains of evening wash your heart to freshness,
May the enclosing arms of the earth hold you through the midnight.

Walk in paths of the winds that awaken,
Walk through the fires that burn off the scars,
Walk in the waters that cool and renew,
Stand with your feet firmly planted on earth

Until you hear the voice of the wind,
Until you breathe the essence of the fire,
Until you smell the message of the waters,
Until you feel the heartbeat of the earth,
Until you see the sun rise
within you,
within you.

Gratitude List:
1. The wisdom and thoughtfulness of that group of students who led chapel yesterday, telling stories of their experiences of racism, opening up the conversation.  The post-chapel discussion took more than two periods because people were so caught up in it, and people were talking about it in the halls.  I am grateful for the courage they had to share their stories and get the conversation going.
2. Warm mittens
3. More readings from the desert mothers and fathers.
4. The collage assignment in Creative Writing.  I love watching them create and develop and work with images.
5. Routines.  Developing helpful habits.

May we walk in Beauty!

What Have You Done?

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DSCN8875
Just a little morning riff here:

“What have you done for color?” –Henri Matisse

What have you done for color,
for light, for dancing?

What have you done
for the quiet journey of the sun
over the ridgetop at dawn?

What have you done for the line,
for the eloquent curve,
for the circle?

What have you done for the pure note,
the perfect A that hangs in the air above you?

Gratitude List:
1. Pie night.  I didn’t write about that when it happened, but when I got home on Friday, Jon was making pie crusts.  He made an out-of-this world vegetable pie, and with the leftover dough, we mixed up a lemon sponge pie.  I think we will have to do this more often.  Of course, it brought to mind the cherry pie that he made for me once when we were dating.  He told the boys that he would help them some day if they want to make pies to impress their dates and their families.
2. How getting rid of things makes the things you hold onto even more real.  We gave away a rather large stack of vinyl records the other day, and suddenly I find myself playing the ones we kept.  My ears are still filled with Abba.
3. Watching a child become a reader.  Literacy is a magical thing.
4. Miracles and wonder.  These are the days. . .
5. Learning the new script for how I speak about myself to myself.  (This is a constant process.)

May we walk in Beauty!

Season of Owl

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2013 May 032

This is the season of owl,
of winds that howl through the hollow,
the season of the sharp bark
of the fox, voicing longing in the bosque.

This is the season of bitter,
of fierce flakes feathering cheeks and hands,
the season of crystal, crisp and cutting,
of beauty that will slice you open.

This is the season of rising,
thin and pale, into the dawn air,
but also of burrowing, huddling deep
into the layers that hold you.

Walk the thin line of today with care,
one foot precisely placed, the other. . .
Perhaps you will notice,
when you raise your eyes for a moment,
how the line curves out ahead of you,
bringing you
always
back home.

Gratitude List:
1. Yesterday’s really lovely start to the new semester.  Nobody, including myself, is very squirrelly yet (we’ll get there, I’m sure).
2. The energy of teaching a new class.  Like being the newbie again.  I’m a little terrified, but in a good and energizing way.
3. Clouds.  Whole fantasy worlds and landscapes there above us.  This is the time of year when the clouds are tinged with sunset as I drive home, and tinged again with sunrise on my way to work.
4. Snow.  Just a dusting.
5. How a hot drink warms hands and face.

Blessings on your day!  May you find Beauty.

Anything is Possible

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IMG_0068
Another of Ellis’s funky photos.  This may actually be me, caught in a swirl, against the barn, against the sky.


when the dream has shifted,
sifted away into the mist

will you still find yourself
moored to the rocks of the day

or off in some alternate realm
where anything is possible?

Gratitude List:
1. Yesterday’s message: “You are a beloved, precious child of God.”  Pass it on.
2. Chili lunch yesterday, thanks to the Junior Youth.  And there was a delicious vegetarian option.  And Cholulu Chipotle hot sauce.  And both cornbread and rice.  I’m suddenly feeling hungry again.
3. Outlining my classes.  I love the feel of possibility, the sense of organization at the beginning.  I am vowing to hold onto that careful organization more solidly throughout this semester.
4. Staff Development Day.  Sometimes I hate meetings, but Staff Development Day is a school day when I don’t have to be responsible to prepare anything for anyone else.  I can look forward to receiving all day.  I love the bustle of the full group of teachers from all the campuses.
5. Language.  What an amazing gift language is, the web of words that we build between us, to channel ideas and thoughts and dreams and feelings between us, bridging the separate worlds of our bodies.

May we walk in Beauty!

Three Eggs of Possibility

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Three Small Eggs

What three small eggs
are you incubating?

Three tender dreams,
three hidden hopes,
three waiting wishes. . .

How will you hatch them?
How will you nurture and tend
the golden possibilities they contain?

Name them now.

Gratitude List:
1. Endings and Beginnings.  Today is the last day of the first semester.  I am ready for a change, ready for the new start.
2. Baby Steps.  I am learning, finally, here as I approach the end of a half century, that I can take baby steps.  I don’t have to wait until I am ready to do The Whole Thing before I embark on a project.  May I keep learning this one.
3. Learning to know people from all over the world.  I keep being struck by how incredibly fortunate I am to work in a place where I can get to know people from China and Korea and Japan and Ethiopia and Russia and Vietnam and the Dominican Republic and. . .
4. The pink, salmon, tangerine glow to the clouds yesterday afternoon when I was leaving school.
5. Hopes and dreams.  These are the days when the seniors begin to show up at the doors of the English teachers, desperately seeking advice about their college essays.  What tender documents these are, holding their dreams.  Yesterday afternoon’s essay was an eloquent expression of a student’s desire to be part of the solution to poverty.

May we walk in Beauty!

Let Me Learn

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

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May I learn to walk today
the way that butterfly walks
down sunbeams and breezes
in a purposeful meander
from shimmer to glory to shine:
desire to desire

to speak in the manner of fox
who listens all day from her home
in a hole beneath bramble
quiet and quivering,
and speaks only in the dark
a fierce and joyful bark
that tingles the spine
and calls out the wildness

to dream the dreams
of the ones who will become,
there in the round stones
of shell, patient, breathing,
until the moment is ripe
for breaking open the houses
that have held them protected.

Gratitude List:
1. Hearing the fox scream from the bosque in the midnight.  Terrifying and thrilling.
2. The Underground Railroad history of Columbia.  We went to see a train layout at the Columbia Historical Preservation Society yesterday and got into conversation with a man who is an expert on Columbia’s role in helping people escape from slavery.
3. These halcyon days of Winter Break that are almost at an end.  It has been time out of time.  Many mornings for snuggling.  Lots of play and chatter.  (In the interests of balanced reporting, it must probably be noted that there has been yelling and grouching and sulking as well).
4. Dream-messages
5. Moving on to new chapters.

May we walk in Beauty!

This is How It Begins

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This is how it begins:
each year, each week, each day,
each golden shining drop of moment
approaches,
full of expectancy,
dawning,
ready for our use.

How will I inhabit the house
of the now that approaches?
How will I wear the cloth
of the day that is given?
How will I wander the story
of the year that has just now
leapt into shining view
through the gray clouds of winter?

I will face this year with resolution
(this week, this day, this moment)
not to wait until this whirling planet
has danced around the sun
to make the new thing new,
but to step into each freshly-birthed now
with eyes that see the golden shine of possibility
and ears that hear the note of each plucked strand of moment.

DSCN8884
Dew on Mullein.

Gratitude List:
1. Yesterday, the family together celebrating a woman of wisdom and compassion.  Some families celebrate the New Year.  We celebrate a birthday.
2. More conversations with the beloved community, with wise parents and in-laws and out-laws.  How listening well and sharing ideas becomes more than the sum of all the conversational bits that appear. How ideas build upon ideas, and shape the ones that came before, and open up spaces for new thoughts to appear.  How iron sharpens iron.  How certain conversations at certain moments prepare me to do the Work that approaches.
3. Three golden rays of sun yesterday before the sun set, shooting through a rift in the grey cloud.  The sun, the sun, the sun: I saw the sun!  And now, here in the crisp morning, nothing but blue above, and golden shine now slipping over the ridge and into the hollow.
4. I have been listening this week to Mindy Nolt’s Movers and Lovers, deeply and intensely, grateful for each phrase.  Move. Love. Listen.
5. The Work.  I am learning, slowly and in tiny little ways, to stop asking myself what I can get from each moment, but instead what my Work is here in the moment.  And realizing, ever so dimly, that when I am really doing my Work (really doing my Work), I am also receiving what I need.

May we–in each dawning moment of this coming year and week and day–walk in Beauty!

Send Down the Roots

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Roots
(As is the way with internet searches, I found this beautiful piece of artwork with no reference to the artist.  If you know, please send me the information.)

Now is the time
to send down the roots,
fine little hairs feeling their way
spiraling into the moist darkness,
between clods and stones,
around the bones
of those who came before,
through the streams that run
deep beneath the surface.

Now is the time
to feed and nurture
all that lives beneath the surface,
all that searches for depth,
all that gathers strength
from the comforting darkness of earth.

Now is the time to bless
the part of the plant that seeks shadow,
that grows inward,
faithfully finding its way
by blind instinct
toward the center.

Gratitude List:
1. Tea with Marie and Benn, conversing and exploring puzzles with the beloved community.
2. How a puzzle on the table creates a perfect setting for making a new friend.  It fills up the awkward silences, gives you a shared task, and is itself an image of untangling and ordering creating a new thing.
3. Roots
4. Still a few more days of Christmas Break.  I feel myself opening, loosening, drawing toward my center.
5. Richard Rohrer.  Moving on from Cynthia Bourgeault’s deepening words of Advent, I have begun to work more intentionally with his daily words.  Today:

God’s life is living itself in me. I am aware of life living itself in me.
God’s love is living itself in me. I am aware of love living itself in me.

May Love live us.