Poetry Prompts

Searching for the Beloved

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a metaphor poem. I have been contemplating the Sufi concept of the Divine Beloved, so a metaphorical search for the nature of the Beloved seemed apt.

The Beloved

She is a whisper
in the breeze,
‎calling you
‎into the wilderness,
‎reminding you
‎of your true name.

She is a crocus
in the wild wood,
‎escaping the borders
‎of the gardens,
‎catching the gaze
‎of your downcast eye.

She is three crows
casting themselves
‎into the tempest,
‎claiming the sky,
‎inviting you
‎to take wing.

Gratitude List:
1. Perhaps it’s the increased exercise, but I am getting better sleep again after about a week of ache-filled nights.
2. How people look out for each other. The three grandsons looking out for their grandma as she’s moving out of her cottage and into personal care.
3. The singing in church this morning. It’s always good, but it’s just so lovely to lead singing and stand in front and hear everyone making music together. Sacred and holy.
4. Pink trees. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink.
5. Yesterday’s weather. (There’s a hidden grumble in that one, I think, but there’s definitely a promise of warmth to come, even if it takes another week.)

May we walk in Beauty!

The Report

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Lines in the sand. Wage Peace, drawn in the sandbox and tweaked.

The prompt for today is to write a poem in the form of a report.

The Report

I. On the Attack
The attack (sorry) strike was surgical.
So surgical, in fact, that we can bomb your country
and take out your appendix in one swift, um, surgery.

II. On Yellow
This morning, I planted one hundred daffodils.
The forsythia is on fire with yellow blooms.
I have a feeling that next spring, I am going to need more yellow.

III. On the President’s Lawyer
The president’s lawyer. . .what? Wait.
Didn’t you hear us say that the strikes were surgical?
Refer to point I, above.

IV. On the Poetic Use of Dreams
Last night,
I dreamed that the Universe
held this whole trembling galaxy in her arms
and sang, “Everything is going to be fine.”
(Yes, that was last night’s real dream.
I did not make it up for this poem.)

V. On Casualties of the Attack
It was a strike.
We say “collateral damage.”
In a surgical strike,
there is technically
no collateral damage.

VI. On Deadnettle
The stubbly golden cornfields
are purple with deadnettle
When my nursling baby
tested high for lead,
I drank a witch’s tea
of deadnettle to draw
the poison from his tiny body.

VII. On Collateral Damage
One man’s collateral damage
is a woman’s child.
One man’s collateral damage
is a woman’s lover.
One man’s collateral damage
is a woman’s father.

VIII. On Safety
I have no fear of the airplanes
that fly low over the hollow.
I worry about active shooters
in my children’s schools,
fire, broken bones, and bullies.
A woman in Syria
worries about the dictator,
about the rebel forces,
about the U.S., and France,
and Britain. A woman in Syria
worries that her beloveds
may become collateral damage.
She worries that the strike
will be an attack,
and that it will not be surgical.

Golden

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

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Today’s prompt is to write a poem with an insect in the title.

Bee Swarm

It was just such a day as this,
on a breezy May morning.
when I laid my new baby
on a cloth beneath the sycamore.

Winds tickled our faces,
sunlight trickled through branches,
and here and there the bees,
the little sisters, zipped around us.

Then time turned itself inside out
and for one sweet shining moment
outside of all moments
we were enswarmed,
enswirled within
a glistening golden vortex
of humming bees,
each a vibrant droplet of light
whirling ’round us.

We were observed, included.
We felt the whisper of a thousand wings,
and then we were released again
into the stream of time.

I took up my sleeping child
and held him to my heart.

Above us, on a branch,
hung a golden pulsing globe of bees,
holding within their ball of light
the trembling majesty
of their fresh-flown queen.

*****

Gratitude List:

1. Yellow daffodils

2. Yellow forsythia

3. Yellow goldfinches

4. Yellow willow

5. Yellow sun on my skin

May we walk in Beauty!

Lament

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment


Today’s Prompt is to write a lament. It’s hard not to get a little melodramatic in such a moment.

Weep, Sisters, weep.
Walk these broken streets
and wail, Sisters, wail.
Do not sleep.
Do not fail to keep
your careful vigil.
Give voice to your grief.

When the young ones are in danger
and the old ones mock and mutter,
when the guns are locked and loaded
and targets are our daughters
and our sons, but we’re too spineless
to confront this evil in our midst:

Weep, Sisters, weep.

When the Earth is torn and bleeding,
and the Ocean waves are reeking
with the filth which we’ve created,
and our greed cannot be sated
for the oil and blood and water,
for the spoils of war and slaughter:

Wail, Sisters, wail.

Warning

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The app I have always loved to use for playing with art filters–Dreamscope–has become unreliable and slow. I’m trying some new ones. This one, Picas, has some promise.

Today’s Prompt: Write a warning poem.

Warning

She’s back in my dreams again,
the ignored priestess,
rejected oracle,
cursed Cassandra,
always prophesying,
never understood,
running through the flaming streets,
crying, Doom! and Fire!

People turn and nod,
smile and wave,
blink and shake their heads,
and return to their buying and selling,
to their marketplaces,
to their temples,
to their businesses,
while their city burns around them.

And her name is Tess, and her name is Bree,
and her name is Emma, and her name is Delany,
and her name is Tarana, and her name is Malala,
and her name is Rachel, and her name is Alicia,
and her name is Patrisse, and her name is Opal,
and her name is Tomorrow.

And we close our ears at our peril.

Gratitude List:
1. Good news from the doctor today for one of my Beloveds.
2. How my inner air has cleared since third quarter grades are finished. The burden of constant inadequacy is slightly lighter. (That sounds more like a complaint, perhaps, than a gratitude, but it is a heavy burden to carry, and any lightening of the load is a true blessing for a while.)
3. New ideas
4. Revisions and re-Visions
5. The color pink. Sometimes I need bright, bright pink, and sometimes people wear it on a day when I need it.

Hold your Beloved ones close.

The Devil’s Deal

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is a two-fer: deal and/or no deal.

It’s been a slow and steady shift,
this drift from principles to politics,
from generous to partisan,
from open heart to closed fist.

When did we begin the slide
from “love your neighbor” to
“protect our borders”?
Did anyone weigh the choices,
name the changes as they came?
Did we all just follow orders?

Sometimes the Devil’s Deal
is not so much a handshake,
quick and dirty on the spot,
but something far more outdrawn,
though no less disingenuous,
no less overwrought.

Gratitude List:
1. Sunshine
2. Chipping sparrows
3. Song sparrows
4. Clouds in blue sky
5. The patterns of tree branches against the sky.

May we walk in Beauty!

Battle the Fear

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt was a fill-in-the-blank title: Battle __(blank)__

Battle the Fear

Walk this way without shame.
Your head will touch the clouds.
Your eyes will shine with the glow
of the new-risen moon.

The Fear will track you
through the wastelands
like a wolf on a scent.
It will hunt you like a lion
across the wide fields.

Listen to the ticking of your heart
and the gentle whisper of breath
as it slides in and out of the bags of your lungs.

Blood and breath will be your companions.
Carry your bowl of stones and feathers
and do not look back.

Whistle in the darkness.
Sing your heart’s own melody.
Remember, always,
the light at the center
of your being.

(www.farmpoem.wordpress.com)

Making Family

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

A year ago today, Jon and I went to the Walters Museum in Baltimore. It is now one of my favorite museums. This is a filter-altered photo of a marble lion in the Egyptian antiquities section.

Today’s Prompt is to write a poem about family.

Sometimes it all comes ready-made,
like seeds, like sunshine, like rain.
But sometimes you make it yourself.
Take a little clay, a palmful of water,
sculpt and carve, shift and caress,
with great care and concentration.

And sometimes it all just gets
tossed in your direction,
bits and pieces scattered on the wind,
and you take the threads into your hands
and begin to weave. And you chant,
and you dance, and then it happens.

There’s no single formula for family,
no direction manual, no guide.
Blood’s one sacred element, certainly,
but water will do it, or wind,
whatever hold the souls together,
like laughter, like tears.

Gratitude List:
1. Celebrating Chester’s 100th birthday. Harmonica, singing, family, trees, stories, and a picture of Sarah Jane. She was there, of course. I know she was there.
2. Grades are all done and marked ready to submit, and it isn’t even midnight!
3. Reading Susan Cooper’s books with the boys. I love when they get so into the reading of a book that they stand up and start to pace, and talk back to the book.
4. Little bits of tidiness.
5. The warm times are coming. The birds tell me so every morning. I can wait.

May we walk in Beauty!

Making Sense

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a poem about the senses. One day when Ellis was about five years old, we had a conversation, and we came up with twenty or more senses, beyond the five they teach in kindergarten. Here are some of them.

Praise for the senses
that anchor the soul to the body,
that cushion the spirit in flesh,
that stitch us together.

For the sight and sound and hearing,
yes, and taste and touch,
and also for the sense of warmth,
and balance, and gravity,
for the sense of what impends,
and the sense of presence,
of self-knowledge, of an inner world.

For the sense of direction,
the sense of time that passes,
of knowledge of what has gone before,
and the sense of duty to others,
the sense of truth, of justice,
the sense of humor,
and the sense of belonging.

Praise for the threads of sense,
the bridges from these islands
of individual humanity
to the world that surrounds us,
and the small universes
of each other.

Gratitude List:
1. The faint rings on the end of Sachs’ charcoal grey tail.
2. The bottoms of his paws, how trim white fur surrounds the black pads of his toes.
3. Advil, when the sinus pressure gets too intense.
4. Four classes are mostly graded for quarter three.
5. How change makes us reflective.

May we walk in Beauty!

Susquehanna Turkey

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to title your poem the name of a food, and go from there. Mine just turned into a recipe.

Dutch Goose

Also known as hogmaw,
pig stomach,
Susquehanna turkey.

The recipe begins with an attitude:
Nothing goes to waste.
When you butcher,
set aside the feet for souse,
prepare the intestines for sausage,
remove the inner stomach lining.
(Okay, so that you may discard.)
All the extras go for the scrapple.

Wash the bag of the stomach
and soak in salted water for hours.
Make up a filling of potatoes,
cabbage, onion, and ground sausage.
Mix with egg, parsley, and milk.

I remember it was peppery,
though the recipes all
contain a dearth of pepper.

Stuff the stomach full
and sew it closed securely.

Roast for hours in the oven.
Baste with butter.
Serve with gravy
made from the drippings.

Gratitude List:
1. Sleeping through the night.
2. Grandma’s cookbook
3. Moving forward
4. Listening together
5. Three deer in the caw pasture at dusk.

May we walk in Beauty!