Poems

Tanka Play

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

For tonight, a little tanka, a syllable count poem of five lines (5/7/5/7/7). I am not sure exactly where this came from, but sometimes you just have to let a poem happen, as Winnie the Pooh says you should.

Well, They Do

The tree is behind
the big red barn is behind
the swing is behind
the sweat lodge frame is behind
the field where vultures lay eggs.

Here is a picture of an African Eagle Owl, not a vulture.  Just because.2013 May 032

Gratitude List:
1.  First Responders
2.  Red Poppy
3.  Second Chances
4.  Warm Hugs
5.  General Silliness

May we walk in Beauty.

Hold Your Heart

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here’s a poem I posted here back in January.  It’s in the chapbook that I sent to Finishing Line Press for their Emerging Women’s Voices contest.

I spent some time today thinking about not knocking people over the head with hope, especially when they’re walking in the wasteland and the hope-talkers can even appear threatening.  I have so much to learn about being a compassionate presence, about acknowledging pain without trying to shift it, to fix it.

Still, I don’t think that a poem about hope by a random blogger can go amiss.

Sing You Gently Joy

Here in the house of exhaustion
Here in the place of retreat
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope

Here when your way is weary
Here where your heart is uneasy
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope

Here when the day closes over you
Here when your sighs bring tears
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope

Here where the way seems hopeless
Here where the rage overflows
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope

Here where the No overcomes you
Here where despair abounds
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope

Here in the birthplace of fear
Here in the abode of loneliness
We’ll sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope

Each morning a new sun rises
and the stories are always renewed
As we sing you gently joy
and hold your heart in hope.

Slides 097Todd and I were about the ages of my children today.

Gratitude List:
1.  Peregrine flying over the farm today.  What a gift.  The Wanderer winging across the ridge.
2.  The healing power of story.  Unexpected story of intense pain and tender joy and hope.  From the man who fixed the tractor.  What a gift.  What grace.
3.  The tractor is fixed.  A little less stress for the farmer I love.  What a gift.
4.  Wild chamomile.  What a gift.
5.  Learning what my work is.  What grace.

May we walk tenderly, in Beauty.

Let’s Get Down To Business

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

First, some mulling drawn from today’s Facebook conversations.  Then a poem.  Then a Gratitude List.

Sometimes I don’t know if I can bear the weight of the problems of the world. I get so furious, not just at the military-industrial complex, but at the way corporations have become the ruling classes, the way Monsanto has taken over the USDA, the way our consumer culture is balanced on the backs of slaves and oppressed people elsewhere in the world. I don’t know if we can turn things back. But I know that there are lots of like-minded people out there who want to turn things back. I’m not sure how we do that, but I want to start by putting as much love out there as possible in the meantime.

I don’t mean for that to sound childish or like I am ignoring the problem. I bring it back to the metaphor of the bowl for the heart. I used to think that I could only have one thing in there at a time, either the joyful things full of wonder, or the angry and despairing things. But recently I have pledged to just sit with the bowl open and let it all fall in together. And the whole crazy mix belongs there. The love I have for butterflies and songbirds is precisely why I hate Monsanto so. The delight I take in my children is precisely why the military-industrial complex terrifies me.

How can I maintain the balance in my head when I get so furious and despairing and tired and sad about so much that is happening in the world? Sometimes it feels so schizophrenic to speak of beauty and wonder and delight when something in my heart is cringing in fear of what the future holds for my children. I know that remembering what I love, remembering what holds my heart, reminding myself why I fight, all this helps me to keep doing my work.

If we who care deeply enough to walk the cliffs of despair, if we let ourselves get frozen or lost or broken on those cliffs, then whatever it is that we’re fighting against has begun to win. Maybe that’s it. Instead of just using my rage and despair to fight this thing, I want to find ways to use my love and wonder to overcome it.

Perhaps my work of late has been too passive, too much in the realm of prayer and contemplation. What is the next step, I wonder?

These Are the Words
These are the things that I tell myself, over and over again.
These are the words I use to remember.

Don’t forget to do your soul-work.
Don’t stop because it seems like no one is watching,
because it seems like no one else is doing their work.
They are working.
Ask around. Tell your own story.
Suddenly they pop up like mushrooms,
all over the yard,
like fairy rings that fairly sparkle in the moonlight.

I always say, Be the web. Throw the lines from one to one to one.
Today I say, Be mycelium.
All those underground signals racing through the soil,
through the roots, through the fine hairs so tiny,
so tiny they are more energy than matter.

But that’s what matters.
That’s the heart of the matter.

We’re all doing our work, sending messages to each other,
invisible like energy,
like the sermons of the fungi
traveling those invisible underground highways.

Something is going to pop up.
I say, Something is going to pop up!

One morning you will wake up
and they’ll be there,
not just hiding underneath the leaves
with the shy toads and salamanders,
but spiced throughout the lawn
throughout the lawns
all over the world,
saying

We are here!
We are doing our work!

In the meantime, keep hoping,
keep praying,
keep making magic spells,
like the one my son made today
from dandelions and Virginia Creeper
to bring peace among the chickens,
and from them to their eggs and to us
and then to the whole world.

In the meantime,
keeping speaking the names of the captives.
Your words will set them free.

Keep singing and dancing,
praying and hoping.

Be the Underground Laureate of The Poetry of Waiting.
Be the One who Sings to the Dark Moon.
Be the Dancer in the Sullen Crowd.
Be the Painter of Speckled Eggs.

Oh, I have to say it, though the activists have said it a thousand times,
like Gandhi said it:

Be the change you wish to see.

Until the twining vines of the sacred squash
grow from your heaving heart,
until the song of the whale echoes through your deserts,
until the world is born afresh.
Until the world is born afresh.

This is the song. This is the poem.
This is the story that will heal the world.

Now.
Let’s get down to business.

Gratitude List:
1.  A pair of indigo buntings feeding in the dandelions before the rain.  (Perhaps some day I will write a gratitude list without the wing-folk.  Or perhaps not.)
2.  Ferns.  The ones I transplanted today from the barn wall to the house and walkway were taller than my children.  I think I may just keep adding and adding until the lawn is gone and the children can walk beneath their waving fronds like hobbits.
3.  The feeling of something being released in my spirit as the air pressure changes before rain.
4.  The way people care for your spirit when you ask for help.  That’s what I mean by asking around.  All that good work is being done, all that hopeful energy, all that intentionality, all that tremendous love waiting to spring into action, springing into action even before it is called upon.  Oh, I believe in angels, and some of them take human form.
5.  Conversations about the grandmothers that bring them into the present moment.

May we walk in beauty.  May we walk in love.

Where is the Moon?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

This is pure play, loosely based on a game we made up during supper tonight.  I think I might want to come back to it at some point and re-work the idea.  It reminds me a little of Ted Hughes’ “Amulet.”

Where is the moon?
I think it is in the pond.
Where is the pond?
I think it is under the mountain.
Where is the mountain?
Inside the eye of the dragon.
Where is the dragon?
In the dreams of the fox.
Where is the fox?
In the egg of the hummingbird.
And the hummingbird?
In the shimmering colors of the sunset.
And the sunset?
In the spider’s web.
And the spider?
Oh, the spider is on the moon.

Lura Lauver Slabaugh and a baby
This is a photo of my grandmother Lura Slabaugh.  I wonder how old she was in this picture?

Gratitude List:
1.  All the birdie love in the air today.  A bluebird feeding his sweetheart.  Grackles mating–he did such an elaborate dance with his wings in fans while he sang her a sweet song, and watched her so intently with his bright white eyes.
2.  The way the sun suddenly shone through the clouds when my boy and I were out checking the chickens this morning.
3.  The way the big carpenter bee at the barn swims through the air to check me out–eye to eye–whenever I pass, and then zzzzez away.
4.  Words, resplendent words, audacious, precious, unique, absurd, fetching, delightful, breathtaking words.
5.  The way the Earth feeds us, even beyond what we can plant.  There’s food out there, in the dandelions, the poke, the soon-to-ripen Juneberries, the dock and thistle and plantain.  I use most of these mostly for tea at this point in my learning.  Still, they nourish me.

May we walk in beauty.

The Great Mother

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This is an older poem, one that I have pulled out again to put into my book.
Great Mother

I am the scent of dawn that rises from the owl’s feather
to awaken the floating moon.
I am the fingers of frost that vanish from the budded
branch, transformed by wren’s song.
I am the child of thunder, sinking into a purple
couch of sky.
I am the seed of the mountain that waits in the
memory of the hummingbird.

I am the tufted ears of the vixen, yearning to the footfall
of the field mouse.
I am the snakes of flame which slither through the dark
doorway of the ring of stones.
I am the lustful sermon of the bees,
earnest and ardent.
I am the wild eye of the star, silently observing
the wayward dance of the planets.

Have you seen me slip between the stones of the grotto?
Have you seen me winking in the coals of your sacred fire?
Have you seen me flash through the electric air of your dreams?

Oh search for me among the brambles and sharp stones on the hillside,
within the bubbling heart of the spring.
Listen for my name in the bluebird’s chortle,
in the whisper of wind through the milkweed.

I will be found.
I will be found.

Open your hands and search
within the wrinkled webs you carry there.
Grasp the shattered ray of light
which passes through the crystal’s heart.
Drink the shadows which surround you
as the day scampers away over the fields.

I am here.
I am here.
I am always here.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Honey Lemon Ginger Tea
2.  The gloaming.  The way the trees come alive in the dusk.
3.  People who care deeply about the Earth and Her creatures.
4.  Freshly vacuumed rugs and freshly mowed lawns.
5.  The fresh faces of dandelions.

May we walk in beauty.

It’s Really That Easy

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

“Why are you a Mennonite, Mom?” asked Ellis.
Because, I said, I want to honor my ancestors who died for this path.
Because I like the way we sing.
Because I want to walk this path of building peace.

“This is the way to stop a war,” he told me.
“Tell the people that we were not created to fight.
We were created to love each other.
It’s really that easy.”

I bit my tongue and did not ask
why he still fights with his brother then.
Time enough to absorb the subtleties.
For now, I’ll follow that golden child
and listen to his story.
It’s really that easy.

Gratitude List:
1.  Saying Yes.  Weaving my strand into the story.  Being welcomed.
2.  Largesse.  I like that word, and the idea.
3.  A tapestry of excellent conversation and tasty food and wine.
4.  A nap.  I felt as if I had shifted sideways into someone else’s reality.  Last year it would have been an unimagined luxury to lie down for a nap on a Sunday afternoon with a warm purring cat on my lap, but today my children could sort of end for themselves for an hour.
5.  The good quick-read mystery novels of Ellis Peters.  I am reading A Rare Benedictine at the moment.

May we walk in beauty.

Soft

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

for Leigh Phillips

Tell me something soft, you said,
and all I can think is the soft bellies of my hens,
the place on the inside of the elbow,
or the tender skin on the head
of the woman of Goose Creek
who has shaved her hair
and walked into her story.

Soft, like the ashes that have cooled
when the burning is done,
when you sift the remnants of the past
between your open fingers.

Even the word loss has a softness to it,
the rounded vowel, the soft hiss at the end.

Are there breezes in your Brooklyn,
soft whispers in the air?
Can you hear how a tree in Pennsylvania
murmurs with your voice
into the soft and tender wind?

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Noticing.  Today I have been thinking about the spiritual practice of noticing, and of all the ways
2.  My parents have taught me to notice.  How noticing keeps me conscious of
3.  The present moment.  How the present moment is
4.  The Exquisite Doorway between past and future.  How that transition from past to future is always taking place, as naturally as
5.  Breathing out and breathing in.

May we walk in Beauty.  Namaste.

Oriole is Home!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Sun shines through new leaves on the sycamore
then, high in the treetop,
clear, like whistling for a dog,
he calls.  Home again.
A flash of orange,
the truest orange possible,
and oriole has returned to the hollow.

Gratitude List:
1.  Oriole is home!
2.  May day party at the elementary school.
3.  Watching my 7-year-old painting the belly cast made when he was in my belly.
4.  Denise Levertov
5.  Reading A.A. Milne to the kids.

Namaste.  May we walk in beauty.

Bowl Full of Winter

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Here in the space between what it means
and what is brightly shining,
in the moment between breathe out
and breathe in again,
in the doorway to May

I have found the key to the door
of my grandmother’s old house.

Here in the thin space
between sun rays,
in the verdant corner
between the wren and the bluebird,
on the threshold between worlds

I place the key,
along with a small white stone
and the small arm bone of a squirrel
into my bowl of winter.

I have been pulling poison ivy
from among the honeysuckle vines,
plotting kindness to my neighbor,
watching how the wisteria twines
around the iron railing,
how it cascades into sunshine
like a purple waterfall.

Gratitude List:
1.  Reiki.  I saw so many colors during my session.  Such colors.
2.  People who support their local farmers.  I am humbled and honored by it every year.  Grateful, so grateful.
3.  The Gnomes of Goldfinch Farm.  They offered Jon the gift of a stunning clear quartz crystal today.  A twin, with double terminations.  Jon would say he found it.
4.  The way the wheel turns so lucidly into May.
5.  Fried Rice.

Namaste.

Conversations

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

The Things I Forgot to Tell Mara on the Phone Yesterday
and Some Things I told Marie in Email. . .

“and see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,”
–Jane Hirshfield

I was such a pleasure to take a little walk
inside your head with you
while this was sprouting,
these ferns uncoiling their sacred spirals
into the dappled light of the woods.

I forgot to ask you about the plural of tanka.
I think I will say tankas,
though to conjugate the Japanese in Latin,
to write many tanki,
would delight my soul.

I forgot to tell you how Ellis says
he knows the language of birds,
that the goldfinch told him
from the branches of the Poet-Tree
that it likes my poems.

I wanted to tell you about the Valley where I was going,
the place where my ancestors first lived in this country,
the way I feel as I am driving toward that place,
like a magnet draws me onward.
How I have decided not to put
the Weaverland Cemetery poem
into my collection.  How the demons in it have been exorcised.

I forgot to tell you that I am writing a new book,
forgot to ask how yours is progressing.

I love the streams where consciousness flows,
says my friend Bev.  I wanted to tell you
how I am learning to follow that stream,
especially this month, how I want to break words open
and see how they work from the inside,
the way Leigh does, and you do.

My sister quotes an expert in her book:
Take everything here as intended.
This is not fiction;
still, it is intended.

You will notice that I left out the but in that last sentence.
I suppose that still is a cop-out, but
I’ll keep it there and move along.

There is a scar on my belly
where my children were born into the world.
I have worked so hard on myself about that scar,
mostly remembering that it is a new opening,
a sacred space opened up for new life to enter the world.
When I don’t catch myself,
I find myself thinking of it as a reminder of my failure,
questioning, always questioning whether I tried hard enough
to bring my children to birth in the natural way.
Next time I start to fall into that chasm,
I will think of my proud flesh.

I have not worded the journey
in quite this way before.

Now that it comes down to it,
most of what I am telling you now
is things I have thought about today,
remembering the sound of your voice,
the delicate silences in your phrasing,
the poetry you weave in the music of your voice.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Oh, William Stafford:  “I place my feet with care in such a world.”
2.  Elderberry syrup and brandy.  I will not catch that cold.  I will not catch that cold.  And I will be very happy while I am not doing it.
3.  One step closer.  The day was filled with the magic of stepping closer to becoming.
4.  The dream of Grandma’s house.  For years, it was my most commonly recurring dream theme.  After the house was torn down in 2005, I stopped dreaming about it.  Yesterday, we drove through Blue Ball to the Weaverland Valley, past the garage that is now where her grand old Victorian house used to stand.  We visited her grave, and the graves of my uncles.  When we got home, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion, like something was calling me into sleep, and when I slept I walked through her house again, as always discovering rooms that I had never known were there.  This time I found things I had written years ago, found pieces of myownself that I had forgotten.
5.  Julia Butterfly Hill.

May we walk in beauty.