Poems

Throw Open the Windows

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

candle

If you wish to find rest here below and hereafter, in all circumstances say, “Who am I?” and do not judge anyone. –Abba Joseph to Abba Poemen

Rattle the bars,
turn the screws loose,
throw off a limitation or two
like veils and garments cast to the wind.
Open the windows and doors,
welcome the wild wind,
escape the cage.

Gratitude List:
1. Synchronicity.  When you begin to look for it, you see it everywhere.
2. Advent.  Something new is coming.
3. Weekends.  Time to rest.
4. Solstice.  Soon, soon, soon the sun returns.
5. Poetry in the hands and brains and hearts of ninth graders.  Brilliant.

May our hearts, our hands, our minds be open to what the day brings.

Growth

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

A caution, from William Stafford:

“If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in
the world and following the wrong god
home, we may miss our star.”

found poem
A found poem I put together a year ago.

Gratitude List:
1. Cleaning and shifting in order to make room for Christmas.  Changing up the routine.  Even Mzee Fred, the old man cat, changed his routine: we couldn’t bear to kick him out last night–he looked so peaceful sleeping under the tree–so we left him there, and he didn’t come yowling up the stairs at 3:30 in typical fashion.  I woke him up this morning.
2. Taking a day’s break from the news.  I may do it again today.  Only a few moments at day’s beginning and day’s end. . .  Bringing the Contemplative and the Activist into balance.
3. Pattern and texture and line.  I have started exploring the meditative possibilities of Zentangles and doodles again, and am loving the way it helps me notice things, to pay attention.  It can get obsessive, as it did the other day when a girl with amazing braids walked into my class–I wanted to sit down and draw them.  She had braided several little strands of fishtail braid and then she braided those together.  Layers of line and texture.
4. Mercy.  Like dawn, like light streaming in, illuminating the dark corners.
5. How we grow together in wisdom.  One of us says something, and it sparks a new idea for the other.  Together we refine and develop and grow and share.  Isn’t it lovely how that works?  Thank you for being open to working new wisdom together.

May was walk in Beauty, in Mercy, in Wisdom.

The Moment

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I lay down for a nap, to try to sleep off some of this fog.  I thought that perhaps I could catch a fish from the dream-stream for the poem that I am to write today.  The prompt is “let the moment begin.”  When I woke up, the last line of this poem that I wrote in April of 2014 was singing itself over and over again in my head.  It took me about half an hour to realize it was my own.

Prayer

To wait within the moment for the coming dawn,
To breathe the single breath of all that lives,
To walk the web on which we all belong,
To face the newborn day with love instead of fear.

To listen for the whisper of the Spirit’s wind,
To feel Creator’s heartbeat in the world around,
To hear the grace of the Beloved in my neighbor’s voice,
To embrace the sacred space between the past and change.

* * * *

So, today’s poem might look a little like this:

Step into the stream of time and change,
feel the tug and swirl that draws you on,
swimming where the current takes you.
Say the words that hammer at your throat:

I am here.

And again, as you feel the current take you,
no longer the same here where you were:

I am here.  And here.  I am here.

Let it echo from the walls of your heart
as the stream bears you onward and outward.
Each time you say it, you burst into flame,
all flame, all wind, all perfect dreaming:

I am here.

An Open Letter

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Today’s Prompt is An Open Letter.  I am so beaten up by this bad cold that I can’t even think straight to write.

An Open Letter to the Bug

I don’t even know what to call you:
A Bad Cold? Feverless Flu? Exasperation?
Whatever.  I concede.  You’ve got me.

I knew going in to that family party three days ago
that I was already sunk, but I struggled onward,
enjoyed the day, and likely infected at least three loved ones.

By yesterday, I was sure I was back on my feet again
but you laid me so low, I couldn’t even taste
that sweet potato casserole, that shoo-fly pie.

Today was just a blur of throwing good money
after bad.  I can just do this one more thing,
I thought, but I’m a goner now, for sure.

I’ll soak myself in Ny-Quil
and sleep you out of my system.

Vast and Inescapable

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

The prompt is to write a poem based on “It was a dark and stormy night,” but to substitute my own adjectives.  I’m not entirely sure what this is about, but I’m still working out the dream.  Where does a pacifist find such visceral scenes of violence?

It Was a Vast and Inescapable Night

It was a vast and inescapable night.
The ghost in the attic had called his benediction
down the stairs–“Get out of here!” he’d said
as cheerily as usual, which is to say, not a whit.

The Night Mare whinnied in my ear,
“I have a nice little gallop planned for you tonight.”
She promised me she’d take it slow to start,
and show me deeper pools than usual.
I’d learn new meanings of my name.

The man was weeping when I shot him in the head
although he knew, like me, what was required.
It was myself I shot, of course, so loss and fear
and grief compounded with the guilt I felt,
the trembling gun still steaming in my hand,
and a body waiting for discreet disposal.

“I have done this work before,” I told my shadow steed,
“The murder.  Culpability.  The hiding of the body.
But in past dreams I was the victim, not the agent.”
Last time, my life was vastly changed.

I wish I could say that the sun sprang forth
into morning with a hearty shout,
that I leaped out of my bed,
my new name burning in the air above me.

But days have passed and the curmudgeonly ghost
still treats me more rudely than I deserve.
My Shadow Mare has left me to wander
the dream meadows darkly and in silence.

I wear my new name around my neck
in a small leather pouch.
I have yet to check it, to see it,
to listen for its colors in the bright day.

Leftovers

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IMG_0239

Prompt: Write a leftovers poem.

What you have is the residual,
the leftover, the new guiding principle:
When all is said and done the finest morsel
may be in the doggie bag
awaiting your next meal.

Don’t underestimate the power
of the second day’s feast,
the way memory seasons the taste
with her own sweet-savory-sweet,
how the sharp edges of solitude
define the shape of intimacy.

Gratitude List:
1. That streak of orange fox, lithe and muscular, that raced across our path yesterday morning while we were on the way to Thanksgiving dinner.
2. Laughing together
3. Singing together
4. Eating together
5. Moments of solitude, too.

May we walk in Beauty!

Luxuriate in Love

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EWK 5 001
May your baskets be overflowing.

Today’s prompt is to write a luxury poem.

Today, whatever you do,
take a moment to
luxuriate in love.

Gratitude List:
1. Taking a day to acknowledge gratitude.
2. Reason and logic
3. Magic and mystery
4. Honey and lemon tea
5. You.  Thank you for being in my life.

May we walk in Beauty!

Tangle

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Write a Love/Anti-Love Poem.  I am struggling with my lack of love for the purveyors of violent and xenophobic rhetoric, so that’s where I went today.

To practice lovingkindness
includes that tiny word
that stops me up every time.
Most, perhaps.
But all?

I can love the tangerine sunset
glowing upward onto aquamarine cloud.
I can love the orange orb as it falls
below the hills to my west,
and its ghostly echo the moon,
sailing behind a bank of gray to east.
The curling wisteria I can love,
and the earnest eyes of the fox kit.
My heart reaches upward, fiercely loving
the starlings in their whirling dance.

But so many layers lie between me
and love for the leering buffoon.
See, the language, even,
has to peel away,
and then anxiety’s rising tide
that eats away at the beach
of compassion.

Turn the next page, and everything
is colored by impotent rage.
How can I cast the line out of this tangle?

Ho’oponopono

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DSCN8634

Brewer’s prompt for today is to write an apology poem.  My friend Natasha, who writes the blog The Year of Black Clothing, introduced me to the Ho’oponopono, a traditional Hawaiian ritual of forgiveness. There are four sentences in the process, sentences which are meant to transform the person speaking as well as to bring healing to the situation.

Apology to the World

I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
Thank you.
~~Ho’oponopono

For taking more than my share.
For closing my eyes and my ears.
For talking over your pain.
For telling you how it should be.
For assuming you were my enemy.
For ignoring your story.
For belaboring the point.
For walking away.
For becoming helpless with worry.
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
Thank you.

Gratitude List:
1. Dawn and sunset.
2. Yesterday’s stories.  Dreams.  Mystery.  Healing.
3. Yesterday’s songs.
4. Yesterday’s work.
5. Today’s possibilities.

May we walk in Beauty!

Waiting for History to Repeat Herself

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Today’s prompt is to write a poem titled: “Waiting for (blank).”  I don’t want this to be inevitable.  I am writing out of my anxiety tonight.

Waiting for History

Waiting for History to repeat herself
is turning me into a statue of salt.

She sits next to me in the cafe,
stirs a load of sugar into her brew:
“It takes the edge off the inevitability,”
she tells me.  “Inevitability is bitter, Girl.
It twists my gut into knots.”

She pours the cream,
sloshing it all over the counter,
and grabs a scone from her plate.
Her elbow sends the coffee mug
careening to the counter’s edge.

“I knew that would happen,”
she says, waving her butter knife
a little too close to my face.

I want to grab her, yell,
“Slow down a minute, Hon.
Relax.  Take your time to settle in.
Concentrate on what you’re doing
right here in this moment,”

but she seems to be reading my mind.
“Impossible,” she blurts,
scattering crumbs across the counter top.
A dollop of jelly plops off her scone
and into her coffee.  “I can’t slow down,
can’t settle, can’t give you time
to catch your breath on this one, Babe.”

Outside, snow curls out of the mist,
and voices call out sharply.
I’ve heard them all before:
Protect the Fatherland.
Eliminate the immigrants.
This is the time to show our
strength, to flex our iron arm.

“It’s beginning,” says History,
one elbow in the puddle of coffee,
the other in the wayward jam.
“I’ve heard it all before, Girl.
It’s the same damn grind,
over and over again.”

I sip my coffee black.
“Inevitability, Sister.”
She draws out the syllables
and hands me the cream.