Poems

Bridges

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In Honor of Ruby Bridges, Who Walked a Gauntlet and Turned it Into a Bridge

She did not click her ruby heels
and walk across that bridge of rainbow
home to Kansas. No, this one had the ruby
in her heart, and set her black patent leathers
schoolward, with federal marshals
at her corners, like framing a house.

She made a bridge, this one.
She might have quaked–
who wouldn’t, with the vitriol
of a nation tossed her way
like the tomatoes on the wall
in the Rockwell version?–but
she walked her pathway daily,
built that bridge with daily walking.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Ruby Bridges
2.  Martin Luther King, Jr.
3.  Rosa Parks
4.  All those who fought and marches and sang and endured to bring about civil rights in our country.
5.  People still doing the work to confront and transform racist thinking in self, community, nation

May we walk in Beauty.

How it Begins

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

 

Have you caught the rustle of wings

as the train rushes through,
hardly slowing to stop at the station?

Have you felt the breath in your ear
as the quiet sun leaps from the ridge
and touches your face like a lover?

Have you noticed the shadow that darts
just at the edge of your vision
as the river flows with purpose
under your ancient bridge?

And suddenly, before you–
before you can take another breath,
the madness is upon you,
the craving has taken you,
the pen is in your hand,
the words glow and bleed
beneath your fingers.

Gratitude List:
1.  Major kitchen renovations that cost less than $200.
2.  Book Faeries.  They keep coming back to this list.  After last night’s discussion of My Side of the Mountain, we got the recommendation for the lovely book We Were Tired Of Living in a House, which we have checked out of the library and which we love.  That reminded me of the books that one of our Book Faeries gave us last year: Miss Twiggley’s Tree, and Andrew Henry’s Meadow.  I am beginning to find great hope for us all when there’s such a theme running through children’s literature of people living outside of civilization.
3.  Grandma Jane’s stories.  And poems.  And songs.  A little boy was too shy to appear to be listening, but he followed it all with an eager heart despite his quiet face.
4.  Dandelion wine
5.  New ideas blazing through

May we walk in Beauty.

The Light of Day

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2014 January 021

Where did you go when you
walked through the veil?  Whose

candles lit your eyes?  And how
did you bear the singing of the stars,

streaming all around you as the whole
roaring cosmos rushed by?  Did you dream

of the egg of the universe?  Did you
wonder at the bright door of the moon?

When did you see it, the pathway,
the portal, the light inescapable?

And when did you become the light
that sparkles over the snowdrifts, the

breeze that stirs the soft feathers of the wren,
the murmur of the creek as it flows through the valley?

Gratitude List:
1.  Jane’s marvelous memory for poetic recitation.  She might ask me the same thing three times in five minutes, but she just might recite half of Hiawatha from memory.
2.  Brooke Gladstone’s interview with Cyndi Lauper on On the Media today.  I will always love her iconic singing voice, but today I was utterly mesmerized by her sweet speaking voice and her accent.  I kept wanting to pull the car over and write down the things she was saying.
3.  New red fish with a big blue snail.
4.  Shelter.  I admit that this one carries a great deal of anxiety, too, as I think of those who do not have the luxury of shelter on this cold, cold night.
5.  Epiphany.  The light shines in!

Come!  Walk in the light!

Landscape Manuscript: An Experiment

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Here is a poem that is sort of off my beaten path, out of my kilter, definitely beyond my safety zone.  I started it over a year ago.  It’s a mash-up between poetry of pure sound and a villanelle.  I abandoned it after two stanzas.  Then this week, after I heard a recording on the radio of Gertrude Stein reading some of her poetry, and realizing how the simple sounds moved me deeply, I returned to it.  Here is Landscape Manuscript:

ancient spectrum glinted speculate
responsive orphan mystery spot green
digest interpret dervish deviate

elocution wild landscape percolate
inscribe revision often sigh unseen
ancient spectrum glinting speculate

wily wonders intersperse ameliorate
and if and when and should and mean
digest interpretation dervish deviate

manuscript within divine yet designate
extraordinary rendezvous eloquent serpentine
the ancients spectral glinted speculate

resist revolve re-grow restore renovate
while verdant hallway wren careen
digesting interpret dervish deviate

rushing flitter whirr beyond palpitate
the doorway opens to a realm between
ancient spectrum glinted speculate
digest interpret dervish deviate

2014 January 018

Gratitude List:
1.  Wingprints in the snow
2.  Wind in the breast feathers of the wren
3.  Family.  The Weaver Family Reunion.  I think Grandma must have been smiling tonight.
4.  Tea with honey and ginger
5.  A veritable flood of poetry on the internet in the past couple of days.  (And bonus: the chance to use the word veritable.)

May we walk in Beauty.

Illumination

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Tanka

The fields are open
to the moon and falling snow,
an old, well-worn book
the moon reads through shadows
before she drifts off to sleep.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Sharing lists of favorite books
2.  Mary Oliver’s Red Bird
3.  That garlicky guacamole my mom made–if that doesn’t send this cold running, I don’t know what will
4.  Moments of illumination
5.  Fairy Tales

May we walk in Beauty

The Marker

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

(on the day of the massacre of the people of the Conestoga 250 years ago)

Come with me now, Bright Souls
and we’ll sit in a circle together.
Silently a while.  Then we talk.

Light six candles
for the people of the longhouse
who died that wintry dawning.

The air is filled already
with too many words.
The day carries so many mutterings
on the wind, on the wings
of the vulture, drifting
above the broken fields.

Sheehays, Wa-a-shen,
Tee-kau-ley, Ess-canesh,
Tea-wonsha-i-ong,
Kannenquas.

If we are to keep awake,
to live in the place
where the heart stays open,
then perhaps we must look
into the teeth of the story.
Together we gaze at those shadows.
Together we speak their names.
Together we listen for the sparrow’s call.

At the place of the great stone
I did not speak their names.
I left my shell there at that place
in the glittering sun.

Some days I cannot bear the darkness,
but I will close my eyes and sing
while you keep vigil near me.
And when you falter, too,
I will have found the strength renewed
to witness the tale while you sing to me.

Perhaps you will not believe me
when I tell you: As I drove
that road toward the River,
six deer ran across blue shadows
cast by afternoon sun on snow,
over the fields to the road.
They paused a moment to watch
the golden fish of my car approach,
then slipped across Indian Marker Road
and were gone, past the still pond
and into a fringe of wood.

2013 December 105

Gratitude List:
1.  Deer running through blue shadows on a snowy field
2.  The winter slant of light, sparkling on snow
3.  Roasted Brussels Sprouts, and radishes and turnips and potatoes and carrots
4.  Snails.  Who would have thought I would love snails so?  Now that the fish has died, the snails provide much more entertainment than I would have expected.  The big blue one has doubled its size in two weeks’ time.  Their antennae are swirly.
5.  Learning to listen, to wait

May we walk in Beauty.

In the Hall of the Disappearing Creatures

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<Prompt 30:  Last One.  Write a Disappearing Poem> An interesting piece of synchronicity: someone declared today (Nov. 30) to be the International Day of Remembrance for Lost Species.

One black rhino falls on the Savannah.
Deep in shadowed jungles,
the Formosan clouded leopard
winks out of time.
Poor old Lonesome George,
the last Pinta Island Tortoise,
slowly ages to stone.  And gone.
Celia, the last Pyrenean Ibex, taking
one last breath beneath a quivering acacia
on a windswept, sunset plain.

The Japanese river otter.  The Liverpool Pigeon.
The Eastern cougar.  Javan Tiger.  Golden Toad.

The Ivory-Billed. . .don’t say it.
The Ivory. . .no, not yet.
Keep that door open yet a little longer.
Listen for the wheep and cluck
deep in the swamp.  Watch
for that flash of white through the mosses.

2013 November 210
From the State Museum of PA

Gratitude List:
1.  Hope
2.  Warmth
3.  Light
4.  Art
5.  This moment.

May we walk in Beauty.

Commercial

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<Prompt 29: Write a Commercial Poem> Oy.  I’m tired.  Here’s a toss-off:

Face it.  You’re not good enough,
not clean enough, not nice enough,
not beautiful.

You need more stuff to fill you up,
to ease your grief, to fit your need,
to fill the hole.

Don’t you feel that blinding ache,
relentless need, the restless urge,
desire’s pull?

Just buy more stuff, just do your part
to keep the Corporation in the black,
to meet our goals.

Gratitude List:
1. Venus!  She is so big and bright she makes me want to grab my frankincense, saddle up the camels and slouch off to Bethlehem with the other rough beasts.
2. Day trip to the State Museum of PA.  We got a membership to all the state museums for half price, and free parking for the day, to boot.  It was wonderful and educational.
3. The Bird People of the Susquehannocks.  Carved as glyphs into the rocks into the middle of the river, wings spread and soaring.  Carved standing into shell and bone, wings folded, beaked faces watchful.
4. Reading Anne of Green Gables to the boys.
5. You.  Have I said that yet? I am so very grateful for you.

May we walk in Beauty.

All is Well

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<Prompt 28: Write a Bird Poem>

Laughter hovers like a bird
in the listening air around us.
Chuckles like feathers
float around the room,
and all is well for this breath.
And for this one.

The air crackles and rustles
with the winged ones watching.
And all is well.
All is well for this moment.


Gratitude List:
1.  You.  Just You.
2.  Because how knowing you makes me be a better me.
3.  Because you make me see colors and hear sounds and taste flavors that I wouldn’t have understood without you.
4.  Because you make sense of things that I can’t make sense of.
5.  Because you ask the right questions, and don’t always have the answers, but sometimes you do.

May we walk together in Beauty.

Mt. Pisgah

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<Prompt 27: Write a Local Poem>

It may feel like a secret,
like a spider hidden in shadow
in the corner by the bookcase,

but I see how your heart opens
again, like a flower, like the view
when the trees have shed

their summer dresses
and the view from Mt. Pisgah
opens toward the River.

The riot of green, then autumn,
though lush and rich, has hidden
the heart from the valley below,

and now, when the trunks stand bare,
the truth of the valley
is laid out before you.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Secret messages
2.  Rafiki’s Maandazis
3.  Conversations with strangers
4.  Pope Francis
5.  Hyssop and rose tea

May we walk in Beauty.