Poems

Please Do Not Read Again

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 6 Comments

Here is my Gratitude List, first today, in case you want to read that and skip the poem.  I went to bed last night, thinking about Gaza, and woke up this morning with terrible images in my dreaming heart.  The poem comes from that.  The Gratitude List is especially difficult on these broody days.

Gratitude List:
1. The image of the labyrinth.  You walk into it, feel the turnings, the changes, relinquish pieces of yourself, and return to the world renewed.  I know I will not always be wandering in the darkness.  I know there is a purpose to the wandering.
2. The people who are doing the work.  I come back to this again and again.  Every bit of work that we do for peace is part of the larger tapestry.  Whatever steps you take will hearten and encourage someone else to pick up a thread and weave.  I have to believe that this work will yield fruit.
3. The ancestors.
4. Morning comes after night.  Again and again and again.
5. Making things with my children.  Ellis and I are making a marvelous bag.  I dragged my feet–“We have this other bag already, which will serve your purpose splendidly!”  Sad face, then: “But this bag that you are going to make for me–I can say that I designed it!”  Okay, Boy, hand me my fabric scissors.

May we walk in Beauty.  May we walk in Peace.

2013 October 108

Now for the poem.  Don’t worry about me, please.  I need to walk into this labyrinth if I am to remain honest and true to something at my center.  I am afraid of the darkness, but I am not lost in the darkness.  Let’s hold each other’s hands.

A little over a  year ago, I wrote a poem titled “Please Do Not Read This Poem.”  I suppose this is a second part to that.  I am feeling raw these days.  I want to know what is happening in the world, want to know what my work is, but I cannot bear to read the news, cannot bear the feeling that I am complicit in the feeding of the war machine.

Here it comes again,
this poem I cannot complete,
cannot write,
cannot stop writing.

I am Lady Macbeth
and my hands are stained
with the blood of thousands,
yet I cannot stop my killing.

I am caught in the calculus:
How many chortling wrens
does it take to bomb a hospital?
How many of those fine heirloom tomatoes–
the Golden Girls, the Red and Green Zebras,
the Mr. Slabaughs and the Brandywines?
How many of them are required
to blow up a school
where refugees huddle?

Most days I hear my ancestors humming,
beginning their songs in the hallways of my heart,
lining the spiraling stairways of my DNA.

They accepted death by fire and water,
they received iron bars and stone towers,
they faced the sword,
rather than give their children and their gold,
rather than offer to Caesar
what they believed
did not belong to Caesar
(or to Mars, perhaps,
what did not belong to Mars).

I lack the moral fortitude
to hold back my yearly tithe,
and face the consequence of that.

Instead, I wake in the night
and calculate the costs
of all my killings.
When Caesar receives my birdsong,
my tomatoes and my blue-eyed chicory,
one full fourth of that
is funneled to the war machine.

Every fourth stone,
every fourth feather,
every fourth sunrise
bright over the hill,
every fourth chicken egg
warm from the nest
is feeding the birth of a drone
or a bomb or a rocket,
filling the ravenous belly
of the god of war.

All this murder leaves a trail.
Those bombs that kill
the children of Gaza today
were bought from my country,
from this war-machine
that feeds off my quiet hollow,
my singing stream,
my tiny fledging hummingbirds,
my royal poplar and my sycamore.

Some days,
the singing of my ancestors
is deafening.
Some days,
I hear the pounding of cannon
and see the dust rising,
even here in this place
where sunlight flashes on birdwing.

Spiders

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I cast a line from me to you,
to you, to you.
Catch and weave,
catch and weave.

And I receive
the lines you cast my way.
Catch and weave,
catch and weave.

Until we have a bowl,
until we have a net, a nest,
a net of hearts for one we love
to rest in, to be held.

Spiders in the corners,
we watch and listen,
we hold the lines
and tell the story
as it unfolds.

Gratitude List:
1.  Net, web, nest
2.  Dyeing–watching the new color emerge
3.  The blue eye of cornflower
4.  The way my children enter literature.  I thought The Hobbit was perhaps too much for them, but they listen and ask questions.  Now they want to venture in to The Lord of the Rings, and who am I to tell them not to.  Here we go: A Long-Expected Party.
5.  The way Jon WK keeps me laughing.  Sometime I’ll tell you the pumpernickel story.

May we walk in Beauty!

Step Away from the Gates

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Yesterday was perhaps a bit of a let-down day after the high of Luna Moth Day, full of barely maskable crabbiness and low-grade anxiety.  Sigh.  I suppose we can’t always live in the realm of the sublime.  The mundane has lessons aplenty.

Worn out by the anxieties and slog of the day, I lay back in the recliner for an evening catnap, and the first part of this just sort of fluttered into my head.

Don’t sit so close to the gates of Despair, sister.
I don’t need to to tell you how the gates open inward,
suddenly drawing the shuffling masses inside the yawning arches.
I don’t need to tell you how easy it is to be carried along in the wave,
or worse, trampled by feet of those who are eager
to prove their dark visions and those who cannot
relinquish their lifelong addiction to fear.
You know them too well, these shadows.
You’ve been in that land.

Roll up your mat, gather your books,
pick up your bucketful of bright yellow flowers,
and walk twenty paces east of the gateway
to the place where a sapling grows patiently
out of the moss-covered pavements.

From this spot you will hear the faint whisper
of breezes, from faraway places
where courage is dawning.

From this breathable vantage point,
you will hear the distant shushing
of waves on the beaches
where hope will awaken.

I know why you choose your perch,
there, on the doorstep.
I know why you watch them so carefully,
tending the crowd like a garden,
why you believe yourself safe,
you, with your books and your flowers.

I know, too, how you belong there,
in that waiting crowd of restless people,
how some days your flowers turn lifeless and ashen,
how the words in your volumes, on grayest of days,
run down the pages like ink-bled tears.

Pick up your mat, I say, now before the gates open.
Turn your back on that archway.
Follow the pathway of bright white pebbles
that I laid there myself one gray day.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The way words come together to make meaning
2. The holiness of the everyday
3. Tomato sandwiches
4. Cool summer morning breezes (“. . .blowing through the jasmine in my mind.”
5. This web that we belong to.  And I don’t just mean the www, though that one has its contribution.  Can you feel how the strands connect us, how the energy runs between us?

May we walk in Beauty!

Waiting for Rain

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Smell it in the air,
feeling of impendingness,
a sense of silence,
broken moments of birdsong.
Everything is listening.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Yesterday’s music
2.  Smell of rain in the air
3.  A clean house
4.  Solutions
5.  Words, gestures, language

May we walk in Beauty!

The Revision

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

This is the poem/fish I wrote about yesterday, the one that just jumped out of the water and into my net, but then needed some serious wrangling to get it to shore. Perhaps it still needs some tweaking, but I need to let it cook a bit now.

When the story has been revised
the ending will read:
We won.

We were the liberators,
it will read above the (overstrike) conquerors.

We
(the revision will read)
were noble.

In the revision:
(notice now my use of the future perfect tense, negative):
There will have been no starving children.
There will have been no raped women.
There will have been no collateral damage with a name
that sounds like your sister’s.

Mission
(you will say)
Accomplished.
(Notice, there, the use of the simple past.)
Done.
Full stop.

Your president
(shifting now to a simple future)
will appear in warrior’s garb declaring victory.
Your president will make it clear that all the strikes were surgical.
Your president will announce that the man killed by that last drone bomb
was The Terrorist in Question,
and not somebody’s gentle Uncle Abdul,
the one with the laughing eyes.

When the revision is complete,
there will no longer be desperate refugee children
seeking safety at your borders.
Instead, you will be protecting your boundaries from ravaging illegals.

When the revision is complete,
your enemies will have committed brutal murders,
while your own side will have taken just revenge.

The words invasion and genocide will have left your lexicon,
replaced by freedom fighters and patriots.

When the revision is complete,
you will sit alone on your little island
and sing your victory songs

to a moon who has turned her face away,
to stars that no longer understand your language.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Mullein tapers and dogbane on the roadsides.
2.  The idea of rain.  The hint of it in the air.  The weather report for tomorrow (80% chance),
3.  Summertime dinners always have fresh vegetables.
4.  Visiting with old friends.
5.  Envisioning.

May we walk in Beauty!

Make it all a Prayer

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

(tanka)

make it all a prayer
each motion, each thought, each step
feel the connection
that silver strand that pulls you
to the heart of another

Gratitude List:
1. Those planets snuggled up to the moon at dusk yesterday.  Any of my star-folk friends know who they were?
2. Making art with my RVRGRL and my Animalboy.  In the time of the beginning, there was a cave. . .
3. Yesterday someone I love anointed my head with oil.  We were thinking more of protecting the crown chakra than of the 23rd Psalm, but I think it was kind of the same thing.  I was tenderly shepherded.
4. Reading about reading.  To say that preparing for teaching in the fall is a stimulating experience is an understatement of vast proportions.  I love to feel The Teacher re-waking within me.
5. How have I not yet had a gratitude dedicated to tomatoes?  Summertime tomatoes!  Red ones!  Pink ones!  Stripey ones!  Golden sunshiny yellow ones!  Deep purple and indigo ones!  Wintry grocery store tomatoes taste like styrofoam and sawdust and the people who pick them are not given fair wages or healthy living conditions–don’t eat them; please, don’t eat them.  Summertime tomatoes are luscious and wonderful, and they’re usually harvested by your local adorable farmer.

May we walk in Beauty!

Summer Morning Tanka

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

the first is the crow
then mourning dove on a wire
sparrow tremolo
a dog barks up the hollow
and the day is beginning

Gratitude List:
1. Morning yoga practice.  It’s very short, but a few balance poses in the morning make me feel balanced all day.
2. Putting a plan into action
3. Making new friends
4. Feedback
5. Research

May we walk in Beauty!

Fragments of a Letter I have been Meaning to Write

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I
We handed you our trust, that egg,
so gently cradled in our palms,
our fingers making a cage to hold it
until we could be certain it was safe
in your own careful hands,
in the nest of your own heart.

II
I am thinking about freedom,
how you are free to do whatever you choose,
and how you are never truly free of consequence.
You may think you act alone,
but everything reverberates,
everything resonates.
It all ripples outward.

The tremors of one selfish choice
can grow into a quake that shakes a village.

So too must the good ones grow,
like instruments in an orchestra
building the sound together,
until a great and mighty
river of sound transports us.

III
You chose shame for shame.
So that will not be the name
I choose for this poem.
You chose the clothes you would wear for this one,
and soon enough the world will see your costume.
I will witness, but I can offer you nothing
but small pity, perhaps, for what broke you first.

IV
These angry squirrels gnaw and chase,
racing through my brain,
but I will not let them make me choose to hate.
I will not let them make me choose to hate.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The hope that good acts will grow and reverberate as surely as acts of cruelty and selfishness
2. Harvest, beautiful and lush and nourishing
3. How quickly the body can mend
4. Worms, down there under the soil, doing their work
5. Waking up to the clucking of the cuckoo in the bosque

May we all walk in Beauty

Pebbles

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Wear today loosely,
like your grandmother’s shawl
or a hat that keeps blowing away in the breezes.

Wear it gently,
and hold it like you hold a kite
the moment before you release it to wind.

Walk through these hours
the way you waded through the creek
or up and down the beach that day,
picking up smooth and shiny pebbles,
pocketing them for later.

Tiny stones of moments
to sift through your fingers,
testing their weight
and feeling their coolness,
to place in a tray on the table.

This one, you’ll say.
This.  And this.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Naps
2. A Fabulous farm crew
3. Memories of winter
4. Echoes of laughter
5. Remembering and looking forward

May we walk in Beauty!

Decisions and Vulnerability

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 5 Comments

Gratitude List:
1.  The way decisions grow and bloom.  You put that seed in the soil there and you say, “Hmmm.  Maybe?”  And then you come back to it a few days later, and–Lo and Behold!–something is growing!  And sometimes the bean you planted comes up, and sometimes something else is there.  Then you decide whether to uproot that or to tend it.  The year we began farming here, we planted watermelons in plastic planting trays.  As we were transplanting them out into the field, I came upon a little square where a tiny nettle was growing instead of a watermelon.  Nine years later, after that watermelon field has been tilled under and re-used for beans, for tomatoes, for squash, for peas, the nettle patch down by the parking lot is growing strong and lush.  Ah, decisions. . .
2.  The way, when you touch the wounded place and say
“This makes me feel vulnerable.  This makes me feel weak,”
the way that makes you real,
the way it makes me less afraid.
When you say,
“This is despair.  This is burnout,”
then all the rest of us can sigh,
then all the rest of us can say,
“So that is what it is.”
Then all the rest of us
can feel so much less alone.
3.  Orchard oriole in the back trees.
Baltimore in the the front.
4.  The bins are washed,
the market room is clean.
Today we harvest.
Today a new season begins!
5.  Possibilities.

May we walk in Beauty!