Poems

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!

Green Shadows

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Sometimes you start to write a poem, and an interesting structure emerges, and so so go on and formalize it and make your own structure.  What emerged here was a 2/8/8/3 syllable-count poem.  These really busy summer days when the farm is ramping up, but the feeling of the world is slow and lazy and dreamy, something about the structure of this appealed to my sense of being caught behind a veil, stuck in a conflict where something in me wants to live in a quiet instinctual place while the world is bustling about me.

The song
of the house finch is green, and the
way the sunlight dapples the wall
in shadow.

Green is
the soul of the field mouse, and the
way that the brook meanders through
the meadow.

The heart
of this morning is green, and the
morning breezes that eddy in
the hollow.

 

I realize that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are crunchy for many people, for many reasons.  If this is the case for you, I wish you comfort and solace, a chance to look quietly at the attendant pain, and good strong breath to carry you through.    Much love.

Gratitude List:
1. For my father, for the way he so gracefully blends reason and wisdom and compassion.
2. For Jon Weaver-Kreider, and his gentle spirit.
3. For books and stories, myths and fables
4. For work, preparations, and planning (opening day on the farm is this week!)
5. For that green sun peaking over the hill.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Way from Here to There

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This isn’t really a poem.  Not in any polished sense.  More like a ramble that wanted to look like a poem.  Consider it a scribble in the writer’s notebook, a placeholder for me to return to and flesh out at some later date.

The little ones wanted to know
at what moment on the bridge
we were in Columbia
instead of Wrightsville.

At what point have we gone
from there to here?

But the bridge is its own thing,
a place between places,
spanning the distance
between town and town,
and time to time.

Everywhere and everywhen
begins here, ends here.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  So much to anticipate
2.  Bridges.
3.  The birds of Goldfinch Hollow.  These weeks, it’s like the Keystone Kops out there.  Cardinal chasing cardinal past the window.  Then back again.  And a third time.  Next flyby is oriole chasing mockingbird.  Then sparrow after chickadee.  Never a dull moment.
4.  Whatever brings relief.  Ice packs.  Cold nettle and mint tea.  Antihistamines.  Sleep.  (This one is sort of a whiny gratitude, I realize.  These days when the allergies are really bad, I tend to get wrapped up in my own misery.  Whatever can give me a few moments of rest and calm, whatever can help me feel closer to baseline again–that I am truly grateful for.  REALLY grateful.)
5.  Community.  Powerful personal healing stories.  The dancing flames quilt banner.  Pot luck.

May we walk in Beauty!

Essay Question

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This one comes out of my meditations about teaching this coming fall.

In five well-planned paragraphs
clear yet profound
concise yet detailed
answer one or all of these questions:

What will you do with your
(I’m stealing this one–
extra credit for the author’s name)
one wild and precious life?

What is the one thing
that you will do
(heads up, another theft–
more extra credit
for author and book title)
to make the world
a more beautiful place?

What I really mean to ask is,
how will you make a difference?
How will the world become
more marvelous,
more magical,
more whole,
more perfect,
because the one and only You
has been added to its equation?

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Meeting up with an old friend after 24 years, and starting the conversation as though we’d been chatting all along.  (Of course, FB has been part of the continuing conversation in recent years.)
2.  Spending an evening in the city.  Sometimes countryfolk need to become cityfolk for an evening.
3.  Flatbread pizza at the Fridge.  Delicious.
4.  Today.  What possibilities it holds!
5.  Libraries.  This one is painful, too, because I am aware of how local libraries are losing funding at a tremendous rate.  Libraries are magical places, and they’re there for everyone, no matter the size of your bank account.  Access to information and education and knowledge.  And the people who run them are super-heroes.  Really.

May we walk in Beauty!

Keep Breathing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I can’t see through green,
through this pollen-misted air
to the other side.
These are the step by step days.
Meanwhile, I just keep breathing.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Communities of women.  Light and gentle chat turns a corner into a story, a birth story, tears, smiles, oh-yesses, I-remembers.
2. The world feels washed clean this morning after that lovely rain.  I’m still a little anxious about venturing outside while the poplar is in bloom, but breathing is a little easier this morning.
3. Poppies!  Did I say poppies?  I have a clear memory of being six years old, looking at a book of flowers of the world with a group of kids at boarding school, and everyone was saying their favorite flowers.  I really liked the rose mallow.  Then someone turned the page and there was a rich crimson bloom with a velvety black center.  That one.  And it has been my favorite ever since.
4. Ruby Bridges.  I was talking about her story with a friend yesterday.  There was a moment in our story when the world depended on the courage of a child to confront evil, to be the tide-turner.
5. Last night’s dreams. Reunions, balance, mysterious pathways, reconciliation.

May we walk in Beauty!