Poems

My Mother’s Voice

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Tanzanian Silence (1966)
by Ruth Weaver

White hot noonday sun;
The earth, still;
Cattle and birds, silent at midday.
Later a breeze would come sweeping up from the shores of Lake Victoria;
And children would laugh and call and run home from school;
But in this time and place
And at this hour,
Sometimes,
The sound of sheer silence.

In that stillness,
That absence of all sound and movement,
There would come an awareness of sound beyond sound
Stars incinerating themselves?
Cosmic expansion?
The ongoing music of creation?

“And God spoke. . .”

I experience a knowingness
That beyond all the sounds of life on earth
And beyond all the noise of my own inner world
God still speaks.

In the Cosmos and in the heart,
God can be heard.
In stillness.
In silence.

Gratitude List:
1.  Learning the poetry of my mother, Ruth Slabaugh Weaver, and my grandmother, Lura Lauver Slabaugh.   Experiencing the wisdom and beauty of the voices of the women who have come before me, my mother and grandmothers, my friends who have paved such incredible pathways.  (And for my father, for pulling out this poem for my birthday, for poetically suggesting that my mother may have been hearing my own music emerging as she wrote this poem in the year before I was born.)
2.  Cicadas
3.  Staying afloat
4.  So many words, so many stories
5.  The imagination of chidren

May we walk in Music, Silence, Stillness, Beauty.

Birthday Poems

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1.  The birthday poems.  Thank you, my friends.  What an amazing day of words it has been.  I am bee-drunk on the flowers of your poems.  (I asked my Facebook friends to send me poems for my birthday, and the result was an ocean tide of poetry.  I am adrift in the most marvelous sea of words.)
2.  Ice cream at Sweet Willows.  Two dips: Salted Caramel Praline Pecan and Whatever She Wants
3.  Zentangling with Ellis.  What a marvel to watch how the images and the lines drew him into his imaginative dream-world.  “Mom, the gnomes taught me the language of the trees.  It’s mostly body language.  The tallest ones are the most talkative.”  And, referring to one of the pictures we were drawing, “Mom. did I tell you who is the fairy?  You are.  The gnomes use inventions and the fairies use magic.”
4.  Growing older, growing up
5.  A tender and gentle little birthday party with the people who brought me into this world, the people whom I brought into this world, and Jon Weaver-Kreider.

May we walk in Beauty.  Oh, so much, so much Beauty!

Revision

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I used to tie myself in knots with finding the perfect word or phrase for a poem, working and reworking ideas and sounds until things began to sound like something manufactured in a plastics factory.  Then, in November, when I decided I needed to loosen up or let my Poet die a quiet death, I found myself spewing random verbiage all over the place.  This was a good thing: my Poet survived.

Lately, the pendulum has begun to swing back again.  I don’t plan to let myself get knotted into that editorial straitjacket, but I do want to add a little more deliberation to my poetry again.  Here is a revision I worked up on my July first poem.  It’s not significantly different; the biggest change is in the line breaks.  I wanted to create more intention to the rhythm of the lines, with a sudden shift in the final stanza.  I think it works.  I’d be glad of any feedback you have about the differences between the poems.

These are the Days

These are the days when I become
a quiet rock, a quivering leaf,
an ear of lichen listening to the stones grow.

The words have wandered off on tiptoe,
eloquence eludes me, and all my sentences
begin with the word So.

So the wind will sing in my sun-rimed feathers
but my own story waits like a seed in the earth,
like a dream that must rise through mud, a bubble,

the nymph of a damselfly crawling through centuries
up the stalk of a smooth green reed
to be born to the clear blue light.

There is a roaring in my ears
like the sound of a newborn grief or rage.
But it’s only the lazy hum of summer,

of fireflies clicking their aching rhythms
into the velvet indigo of solstice,
communing with the waxing moon.

Another day I’ll dawn,
but for now I will sink
slowly into the pond
with Grandmother Moon
and leave my message with the fish.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Variety
2.  Revision
3.  Sweaters and scarves in August
4.  Balance
5.  Partnership

May we walk in beauty.

Palms Filled With Air

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

(for Bret and Sue, in memory of Eli)

the tiny bird needed
someone with the fierce
and tender heart of Buddha
to scoop green feathers
into cupped palms

someone who knew
–oh, how you knew–
to neither cringe at dying
nor waste hope for living

but only to watch
to feel the quivering heartbeat
to listen for the feeble chirrup
to look into the white-ringed eye
to say I am here
to feel the slide of feathers
as wings took the shape
of your palms
and filled them with air
with a whole world

light as ashes
scattered over sunset

Gratitude List:
1.  How tidy the bank looks after I have mowed
2.  Sweat
3.  Root Beer Floats
4.  Golden tomatoes that look like the sun
5.  Hummingbird

May we walk in Beauty.

Clouds, Gardens and Everything Comes Together

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

These are the days when I become a quiet rock,
a quivering leaf, an ear of lichen
listening to the stones grow.
The words have wandered away,
eloquence eludes me,
and all my sentences begin
with the word So.

Wind will sing in my feathers
but my own story waits
like a seed in the heart of earth,
like a dream that must rise through mud,
a bubble, the nymph of a damselfly
crawling through centuries
up the stalk of a smooth green reed
to be born to the blue light.

There is a roaring in my ears
like the sound of grief or rage.
But it is only the lazy hum of summer,
of fireflies clicking their rhythms
into the velvet indigo of solstice,
communing with the moon.

Another day I’ll dawn,
but for now I will sink
slowly into the pond
with Grandmother Moon
and leave my message with the fish.

2013 June 141
The makings of a batch of medicine bags: spinning the wool, crocheting, and adding beads and cord.  Portable and easy to fit in the spaces of a busy season.

Gratitude List:
1.  Clouds.  Not cloudiness, which is its own sort of blessing at times.  But clouds, those Michelangelo works of art that have been so magnificent in the recent spate of changeable weather.
2.  Vegetable Gardens.  Have you seen it, too?  Everywhere, woven through people’s flower patches, a few tomato cages, a wide-spreading squash.  Or off to the side of the house–out front, even–tidy or  wanton, fenced or flowing vegetable gardens.  If this crazy economy has been good for anything, I think it has empowered people to remember that they can grow their own food.
3.  The way things come together sometimes, even when you’re not quite trying.  This is especially nice when I remember the times when things haven’t come together, even when I’ve tried desperately.
4.  Day lilies and chicory.  Bright orange stars on all the back-road banks, and chicory’s beautiful blue eyes, almost as sparkly as my Jonny’s.  Let’s throw in some lace, shall we?  Queen Anne has plenty to spare.  And something golden to balance the lace–buttercups!  And just here, a cascade of lush lavender vetch.  Oh summer!  You fill my spirit.
5.  Making.  There are moments in these busy days when I have to sit down and rest, but my hands still want something to do.  I have found my way back to making again, and am satisfied.

May we walk in Beauty.

Waking Up

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Like the remnants of fog burning away in the morning sun
the last rags of dream whisper through the valleys
of my waking brain, gnats caught in the cobwebs of consciousness.

In the beginning of the year, the drops of mist form words
and a sentence emerges like a sapling from the fog:
All that I have been is compounded in the present moment.

One morning I wake and the spiders whisper the name
of an impossibly green stone, like poison, like miracles:
Dioptase, a viridian eye that sends forth the tentacles of the heart.

Or a song will be ringing in my ears as I tiptoe downstairs
in the dawn: Give yourself to love, if love is what you’re after.
Open up your heart to the tears and the laughter.

I gather the strands of silk and wool and hope that have caught
on the fences between the world of waking and sleeping,
and weave them into the story of the day, the week, the year.

There was this one: I am walking down a sunny city street
and am filled suddenly with foreboding, knowledge of a Terrible Presence.
I know that it will destroy me, and the world, if it senses my recognition.

The key, I learned without learning,
is to keep that knowledge hidden in the back of my brain
and cover it up with gratitude and joy and hope.

(Already I know that I will be revising this poem, to make it less self-referential, less plodding.  But I wanted to get it down today, and this is the place where I do this work.  Welcome to my process.)

Gratitude List:
1.  Towhee is back.  Ellis misidentified him as the orchard oriole.  If you know the two birds or have a bird book handy, you’ll understand why that makes me proud.  He’s getting his birder’s eyes on.
2.  Weighing cheese for the farm store with Ellis.  Impromptu math lesson on rounding up and down to the nickel.
3.  Chocolate cake/brownie goodness.  We have discovered the Grand Unifying Theory.  This is the basis of everything.  I love the Saturday crew.
4.  Phoebe babies in the barn.  It reminded me of the lovely book which my Great Aunt Lizzie gave to us when we were children.  I will read it to my own children again this coming week as we wait for the little ones to fledge.
5.  Ellis making the point that one of the things that is important to him is taking care of the very smallest ones.
(Hmmm.  A lot of Ellis in this list.  He’s a special kid, and so is his brother.)

May we walk in Beauty!

Boxful of Dreams Come True

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

How does one receive
a boxful of dreams come true?
I will name the man in the big brown truck
a priest or professor.  Do I bow or kneel to receive it,
the sunlight sparkling
through leaves of dogwood.
Just stand and smile,
and take it into my hands.
Are there ritual words of thanks and blessing?
Can you know, good sir,
how this act, this moment,
changes me from one thing to another?
How the moment I turn
and walk away from you
I have become something else,
something else entirely?

Song of the Toad
Click on the photo to purchase it on Amazon.

Gratitude List:
1.  My book is here!
2.  The strawberries are in
3.  I won the May Poetry Contest on Versify
4.  That weather out there is as perfect as it can get, and something about perfect weather makes me feel whole and happy.
5.  Did I mention that my book came today?

May we walk in beauty.

The Way You Walk Toward Healing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1.  Brown thrashers on the lawn in the gloaming
2.  The hope of the hummingbird (soon, soon!)
3.  Such pleasant temperatures and cool breezes
4.  Wise friends
5.  The way you walk toward healing.
And I mean you.
So many people I know have lived
through such losses.
Lived, and then chosen
somehow, to put a foot forward
then another, to take the next breath
when your chest has been crushed by grief.
Perhaps you cannot understand this
or perhaps you can:
you have unleashed into the world
such bigness of grace
in those moments of choosing
just the next step, the next breath.
It may have felt like a slog
or like nothing, or hell
but you walked on, you breathed.
Take it for what it is worth:
some learning soul somewhere
has noticed and seen it
for the grace that it is.

May we walk in beauty.

Don’t Know Where It Came From

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Today green the sun rose
and red down again descended.
Sang high in golden birds were singing,
wild the morning spent.

Before the west began in shadow,
out of yonder called the day.
Within the margin birds at vespers
all for indigo, for summons.

Release!  The day, the wander
wondering in the finches’ song.
I would have dawned a tangerine sun
but the orb forgave my tardiness.

Gratitude List:
1.  The way sun twinkles through oak leaves.
2.  Butter-yellow Tiger Swallowtail.
3.  Always beginning again.
4.  Water is flowing.
5.  There is no expiration date on my dreams.

May we walk in Beauty!

Gratitude in Tanka

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2013 May 051

 

Gratitude List in Tanka Form:

1.  Misty day and the
2.  village raising my children
3.  and bird calls at dusk.
4.  The way you speak to my heart.
5.  Always anticipating.

May we walk in Beauty.