Poems

What Will You Risk?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In last night’s dream
we were racing down the road
in a jaunty little car.
(Aren’t all dream-cars sort of jaunty?)

“Holy —-!”
I’m afraid I screamed
what you think I did
as we skimmed the edge
of the giant sinkhole.

“Did you see that sinkhole?
It almost swallowed us up!”
My oblivious car-mates
(Me, Me, and Me,
according to Joseph Campbell)
were not paying attention,
and Oblivious Driver Me
sped up to crest a hill
which was covered with debris.

We didn’t make it over the pile of junk
and had to back up,
had to go another way.

“Oh, well,” said Driver Me to Disapproving Me,
“at least we tried.”

In my head as I woke up,
a familiar voice was singing,
“What will you risk?”

Waiting for the Dreams

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Each year, during the long nights between Winter Solstice and Epiphany, I carefully watch the dreams and pictures that appear to me, gleaning ideas and images that might be helpful to me in the coming year.  This year I am impatient.  I have been cataloging my list for the past two weeks and I want to solidify it and crystallize it.  But it’s also delightful to anticipate what these last few nights might show, so I will wait, and perhaps nudge some of my list into a poem:

While I wait for the dreams to be complete
while I sit at the feet of winter
listening

waiting for the little bell to ring
for the sound of rushing wings
for the things born in darkness
to take form
to rise up–

while a vulture flies across my window
red root and plantain nourish and heal me
a lynx crouches by a granite outcrop in the meadow
the storyteller raises her voice in a chant of longing
and a silent girl turns the corner ahead of me

I sit down to work
and sleep overtakes me:
One more vision for the road
One more message for the journey

So Much There Is

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

milkweedBlessings on your new year. Here is a little something:

So much there is
that cannot be told,
so much to unfold,
so many new meanings to try.

So much there is
that waits in the wings,
so many things
cannot find their sky,
that minuscule patch
of impossible blue
beyond the shadows
of this darkened room.

So many stories
have yet to be told,
so many adventures
of boldness to tell,
to live, to explore.

Open the windows,
pick up the pen,
and then tell me more,
tell me more,
tell me more!

 

Poem: Advent 5

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

640px-Candle (1)

Birds are flying
in the quiet light
above the altar.

Our tears fall with the sound  of rustling wings,
the child sleeps in his mother’s arms,
and an old woman prays for the light to dawn.

For weeks now
we have walked
through our burning cities.

We have stepped carefully
among our shattered shards,
pieced our brokenness together,

and held the birds of despair and rage
captive in the cage of our hearts.

Our pens have bled anguish
onto the page.

Herod will go on
to murder Rachel’s children.

A sword will pierce your heart.

Where is the comfort
promised in the ancient songs?

Still

still

still

There is light.
There is breath.

Our pages have taken wing.
The birds fly between rays of sun
shining through sea glass
falling upon the altar.

The mother hands her baby
to the old ones for their blessing.

“Now,” sings the old man,
“now I can depart in peace.”

Gratitude List:
1. The impossible green of the moss on the bricks
2. Epiphany is coming
3. A Sunday afternoon without the Monday-ness that usually encroaches
4. Taking it one step at a time
5. Holding stories in the bowl of the heart

May we walk in Beauty!

I Will Get to You

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

On paging through Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americans:

I had to put the book down
and walk away,
the fire of it still running
up and down my spine

lest I fall into the pit of poetry
and lose myself there for the day,
for the year,
lose my family,
time,
direction.

Even this,
these black marks on the page,
these birds’ feet in the snow,
quiver on my skin
like coals.

***

Perhaps it’s the result of going so suddenly from teaching to resting, but now my brain is filling up with images and ideas, like a room crowded with children all clamoring for my attention.  Ah!  There’s the image: sometimes when class begins, I suddenly find myself in the center of a crowd of earnest and intent students all needing something from me–a pass, a signature, an explanation, a bit of comfort–and I cannot meet every need at once, but I want to look everyone in the eye and say, “I’ll get to you,” knowing that I haven’t the time or the energy to entirely fulfill the needs they carry.  Today, I opened that book, and suddenly the new poems and writing ideas that I have been putting off for so many weeks now have come crowding about me, begging for passes and signatures and permission to go get a drink.  Were I single and childless, I would make this a day of delicious writing, but I’ll need to put these voices off for just a little while yet.  I’ll get to you, Bright Ones.  I promise I will do my best.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The dimple in Ellis’s chin.  Where did that come from?  I don’t think that the Weaver or the Kreiders have chin-dimples.  Do they?  And why is it so endearing?
2. The poetry of Mara Eve Robbins, which fills me with delight and sadness, tears me up and heals me, whichever I need at the moment–her words always seem to come at just the right time, to be just the right thing.
3.  The writing of Barbara Kingsolver.  Why do I always take so long to get started on her books?  She writes with equal power of both internal and external landscapes.  I am listening to Flight Behavior these days, and all around me now I hear the whispers of butterfly wings.
4. The best Christmas ever.  That’s what the boys keep saying, and who am I to disagree?
5.  Dreams.  Listening.

May we walk in Beauty!

Poem: Advent 4

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This one has to be a place-holder.  I have more shaping to do for this one, but the day has been long and these last hours full of grading freshman essays.  My head is fuzzy, and all I can think of is sleep.  Still, the day called for a poem:

Today we sing
not just to welcome the light
but to push back the darkness.

We stand at the gates of that city
holding hands,
voices raised together,
our songs joyful
and defiant,

our own brokenness holding
evergreen and bittersweet,
like the mended pot
on the altar.

Poem: Advent 3

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN7696

 

“There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.”  –Leonard Cohen

This is how it is with brokenness
says the Mender of Pots:
The piece I placed so perfectly
to match that graceful curve,
and glued in place with confidence–

I had to break it off again
to make its neighbor fit.
Sometimes to reach the second stage
the first must be undone.
Heal and break, heal and break,
and heal again.

Sometimes the glue won’t hold.
Sometimes a shard will settle downward as it dries.
Sometimes the smallest pieces fall to powder.

The end result
will not resemble
exactly
the bowl that first was broken.

Light leaks through the lacy spaces.

Still–
the shape begins to once again
resemble the initial form
and the heart responds
with joy.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Mending.  And breaking and mending.  And breaking and mending.  Necessary work.
2.  Light leaking through the lacy spaces.
3.  Yesterday’s brilliant student concert at LMH.  My colleagues in the music department are inspiring, and the students are incredibly gifted.
4.  I know that the sun is out there somewhere.  It will return.  It will return.
5.  How your words feed me, how they return me to myself.  May we always know the words to offer each other.  Like bread.  Like gifts.

May we walk in Beauty!

After Strand

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Here is a poem, written after Mark Strand’s “From a Litany”:

Here in the hush before morning,
I praise the coming dawn which will push back the curtain of night.
I praise the secret shadows in the bamboo.
I praise the first brave bird to sing.
I praise the soft sighs of the cat curled beside the vents.
I praise the tang of pine entering my body through breath.
I praise the clatter of rain.
I praise the fortitude of the early-riser, driving up the hill to work.
I praise the quiet earthworms, deep in the hollows of warm earth below.
I praise the way words tumble from mouth and pen and keyboard.
I praise the thunder of words, their flood and their tempest.
I praise the silent words whispered at midnight,
I praise the tattered remnant of dreams that hover about me like a halo.
I praise the storm of the day as it approaches,
with all its wildness and adventure.

Gratitude List:
1.  Heat!  A new furnace came yesterday, earlier than projected, and we are warm again. This new one sounds different, and the house has a new winter voice.
2.  The deep, secret green of the ferns by Cabin Creek, after everything else has turned brittle and brown, this green holds on.
3.  That verse in Brian Wren’s song “Joyful is the Dark”:

Joyful is the dark Spirit of the deep,
winging wildly o’er the world’s creation,
silken sheen of midnight
plumage black and bright,
swooping with the beauty of a raven.

The whole song, actually.  In these last days before sun-return, the darkness begins to feel claustrophobic.  This keeps the darkness broad and wild and open.
4.  Being part of a community that actively practices restorative justice, and discusses it together.  I am constantly inspired by my colleagues.
5.  The delight of children anticipating Christmas.  I love being on the parental end of the holiday.

May we walk in Beauty!

Poem: Advent 2

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

DSCN7684

Someone has begun
to puzzle the pieces
of the shattered bowl
back into place.

The fractured pattern flows,
a twisted pathway,
across the scarred surface.
The break will always be visible.

Somewhere in the distance
a voice is calling, “Cry Out!”
And what shall I cry?

Hands up!  Don’t shoot!
Black lives matter.
I can’t breathe!
Justice!

I will not cry for an unholy peace
which rests upon your shoulders.
My cry is only my breath,
all I have to offer
until we all can breathe together.

Weary

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

I am so weary.
So furious and weary.
So weary of my fury.

You’ve got your hands in the air.
I’ve got my hands at your back.
They’ve got their hands on your throat,
and our hands are prying at them,
our hands are clawing with all our might.
We are screaming with all the strength
our sob-wrenched throats can utter.

And the hands that hold the gun,
the hands that squeeze the breath,
they look like mine.

The voice that says,
again and again,
in such a tone of reason,
that rings in my ears,
“Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty.”
It sounds like mine, somehow.