Poetry Prompts

Love and Hope

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

milkweed1  Love and Hope  eggses

“Where there is love, there is life.”  –Mahatma Gandhi

Today is US Independence Day:
May your celebrations today be filled with joyful moments with people you truly See you.

May we as a people live up to the ideals we set for ourselves, the dreams we claim to offer, and
the maturity that independence demands.

Here is your assignment for this morning, class: Set a timer for ten minutes.  Write a poem or an essay about what this day means to you without using the words freedom, values, ideals, dream, democracy, independence, liberty.  (Yes, I broke those rules in the little blessing I wrote up there–that’s what gave me this idea.)

Perhaps it is a function of the lazy rabbit-trail-filled brain-meanderings of summer, but a warning: Today’s gratitude list is rife with parenthetical notations.  I could not help myself, but I am not apologizing, nor am I amending.

Gratitude List:
1. I still haven’t seen one this season, but Jon keeps seeing them, and it makes me happy to know that they live here, too: black snakes.  They’re earnest and secretive, mysterious.
2. Yesterday I wrote about prayer, and a new and dear friend wrote to me of the Sufi concept of prayer as “opening to the divine radiance.” I looked it up, and my preliminary searches have found references to the phrase “Divine Radiance” in Muslim, Christian, and Jewish discussions of prayer.  This brings me great joy.  (And it was a lovely synchronicity, because I read her note just after a conversation with my parents, in which we had discussed Sufi mysticism, in which my father had been reading Hafiz poems to me. Am I not fortunate to have such parents? There’s a bonus gratitude thrown in for the morning.)
3. I love the charge in the air on a morning that is waiting for rain.
4. All the flowers.  In my parents’ (yes, there they are again) garden: deep red gloriosa lily with yellow tips, fluffy white hydrangea, deep purple and dusky rose lisianthus (because my name is Elizabeth Ann, I have this feeling that the Lizzy-Ann flower is personal to me), deep magenta rose, yellow day lily, violet clematis.  Along the roadsides, thousands of blue-eyed chicory (we used to call them cornflowers–I like both names), the elegant dusty green and golden-tipped heads of hag’s taper (mullein, but I like the common name), shaggy pink balls of milkweed that haven’t yet been mowed down (please let them stay!), bright orange day lilies, the delicate lace of Queen Anne, violet carpets of vetch, bright golden patches of buttercup.
5. Community conversations

May we walk–like the snakes, like the flowers, like the birds–in Beauty, in Wisdom, in Prayer.

Happule Evr Aftr

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here are some stories.  The author requests anonymity, so it’s probably best not to talk to him about them.

“ther was a liyin. ther was a mce. the liyin was chasing the muce. the liyin chast the muce up the chrey.”

“Waunts apon a tim thir was a chicin. the chicin codnt lia ene eggs. the uther chicins laft at him.”

“If cows came into my bedroom they wod eat my sox. the wod dschroy my desr. they wod poop on my machris.”

“thir was a dog. the dog’s gob is hrding the shep. a lam was mising. a caing roo was coming to the frm. in its pawch it was ciyreing the lam.”

“Thier was a froge. the froge lived in a ran foriest. one day the froge mit a maucee.  they wre frens. they lived happule evr aftr.”

Gratitude List:
1. One year ago today, I interviewed for a job at Lancaster Mennonite High School.  I am grateful that they hired me, and that it has been as good a fit as I imagined.
2.  I am grateful for my colleagues and the way they care for the students as much as for the subjects they teach.
3.  I am grateful for my students and all that they teach me.  Today, a student announced our new Unicef Club in chapel.  I was hoping that at least five or six people would respond and sign up.  By day’s end, over thirty had done so.  I am thrilled that so many kids want to get involved in humanitarian work, and delighted that the student who hatched the idea is getting so much support.
4. Not being in labor–9 years ago right now, I had already been in labor for about 20 hours, and I still had a whole night to go through.  I am grateful for the medical technology that ensured we both survived.  I’m inexpressibly grateful for this child, who amazes and delights me every single day.
5. The way the sun is shining over the ridge.

May we walk in Beauty!

Spring Settles in to Skunk Holler

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1. Music.  What a concert at the school tonight!  It puts the arts into a liberal arts education.  I am so proud of these young people.  And of my colleagues who lead with such heart, such professionalism, such a striving for excellence.
2. The birds are back in town, birds are back in tow-ow-ow-own.  Chipping sparrow.  Sparrow.  Kingfisher.  And my bright bird of fire: Oriole.  And the goldfinches have put on their brightest vests.
3. That view from Mt. Pisgah over the valley in the mornings, light on the hills at the gap where the River runs through.  The bridges spanning my here to my there.
4. Lily of the Valley.  And lilac.  What an aromatic duo.
5. Grace.  Apologies.  Earnest civility.

May we walk in Beauty!

Color

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Was Winter just particularly ugly and colorless this year?  I know that I had moments of reflection on the beauty of its austerity, the golds and ochres, the many shades of sky.  Still, I cannot remember a time when I have felt such a sense of complete and utter relief at the appearance of the colors of spring.  Most years, the feeling of entering spring has been for me one of coming up from under the earth, breaking out of hibernation.  This year, it’s been more akin to the first breath of real air after nearly drowning.  Every color, every new tendril of viney growth, every spring bird song–like lifelines drawing me back into wholeness.  I don’t think my energy this winter was even as sad or dampened as it can become sometimes in winter.  Still, the colors of these days make me feel like I am coming alive again.

Gratitude List:
1. Flowering trees
2. Pear blossom snow
3. Spring full moon
4. Green
5. Raccoon in the bosque

May we walk in Beauty!

Bury the Seed

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s Prompt is to write a poem titled, “Bury the (blank).”

“What didn’t you do to bury me.
But you forgot that I was a seed.”  –Dinos Christianopoulos

So many voices they have tried
to hide under the earth,
hidden within the clamoring din
of newscasts 24/7,
buried beneath the thousand faces
of the pontificators, the experts,
the mad chatter of the talking heads.
Shovelsful of opinions thrown in
and tamped down firmly
to hold the voices underneath.

How could they have known
the seeds would sprout and grow
like vines that wind around the fences
in the meadows, to bring them down?
Could anyone predict the way those vines
would lick along the base of the barn
like flame to burn up the building?

Gratitude List:
1. Poem in Your Pocket Day, and my students reading poems to me all day long: a Korean poem translated to English, Pablo Neruda read to me in Spanish, Shakespeare and Rosetti, Dickinson and Dylan Thomas and Frost.  Ogden Nash and Shel Silverstein, and poems of their very own.  I have been in a sort of heaven.
2. Stuffed Shells
3. The twins who appeared in last night’s dream: Fearless and Anna.
4. Everything is suddenly so beautiful.  I have been paying close attention to the seasons for several years now, and I don’t remember the last time I was so desperate for Spring’s beauty to arrive.  Warmth, yes.  But this year, it has been an end to the drear of winter that I have craved, and Spring has given me so much green.
5. Pear blossom snow.

May we walk in Beauty!

What Nobody Knows

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Today’s prompt is What Nobody Knows.

Not the trouble I’ve seen,
nor the exact moment blackbird returns in spring,
nor what lies under the blackberry brambles,
nor where vulture rests in the shade
after she has circled the meadow her dozen times.

Not the way to San Jose,
nor the way to make a perfect souffle,
nor infinity’s penultimate number,
nor the hundredth name for God–
except for the camel, of course.

Not which way the wind blows,
nor who is watching the eagle fly above the River,
nor the true purpose of the appendix,
nor the thoughts of the monarch in its jade cell.

With all that can be known blowing about our feet
like the husks of leaves on the forest floor in autumn,
let us wait in the this moment beneath the dogwood tree
while that handsome finch turns his eye sideward to see us,
and embrace each moment of wonder
as if it is a new thing being born.

Gratitude List:
1. Getting a lot of work completed
2. Stretching
3. People who hum happily as they work
4. Blooming lilacs
5. Thoughtful conversations with teenagers.

May we walk in Beauty!

What Does it Matter?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Just a few more days!  I love the challenge of these months, and I am so glad to get the break when they are done.  Today’s prompt is to write a matter/anti-matter poem.  I just let this one run its little free-association course.

Aunty Matter strides into Grandma’s kitchen
in her black stockings with holes in the heels
and a long black velvet dress
with fine lace insets.

She pirouettes.

“What does it matter, Mater,
if I should wander once in a while?
The fact of the matter is:
I’m green only for a day
before my dreams are heaped
in that pile of rubble in the orchard.”

It’s just a matter of time, perhaps
until she’s gone down the anticline,
until she’s reached the event horizon,
the point of no returning.

Still, the young ones are donning
black stockings of our own
to follow her in her dance
as though the dance is all that matters.

 

Gratitude List:
1. People working for Justice
2. People willing to engage the hard conversations
3. People with hope in their hearts
4. People who sing even when it’s dark
5. People whose M.O. is Love

May we walk in Beauty!

Looking Back

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I have been thinking about all my recent Shakespeare raving, and I realize that, in the interest of basic honesty, I ought to mention that not all my students are as excited about Shakespeare as I am.  Some are, in fact, rather un-keen on the Bard.  Still, I hope that some of them will catch a little enthusiasm for the language and poetry and rich thematic content of his plays.

Today’s prompt is looking back.  I have been toying with images of Lot’s wife and the pillar or salt, of two faced Janus, of mirrors and reflections.

At what point do you decide that you have reached
the edge of the chasm of all the collected moments,
that it’s time to look back and see how far you’ve run?

The end of the month, semester, year–
how have the seasons added up?
What do they add up to?

The real question is,
when I turn my face again
to face the leap before me,
will I feel upon me the gaze
of a future self
looking back upon me?

Gratitude List:
1. The Guard Dogwoods are settling into bloom.
2. Dinner with colleagues.  Good folks.  Good singing.  Good food.
3. Shifts in routine–adding freshness, and pushing me out of my comfort zone
4. That curious little hamster
5. Hosta

May we walk in Beauty!

Strange Bedfellows

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

How appropriate!  The prompt for today–and I am not making this up–is to take a word or phrase that was coined by Shakespeare, use it as the title, and then write a poem.  I am in a sort of Shakespeare heaven right now.  Just a couple weeks out from Julius Caesar with the Sophomores, in the middle of Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Freshmen, and just finished a weekend ushering for an excellent student production of The Tempest.  I love being back in academia.  Again, this is a quick poem at the end of a long weekend, a placeholder until I find my way back to these in another couple months.

Strange Bedfellows

Misery acquaints a man–
acquaints a woman, too–
with the oddest of companions,
a fishy-smelling monster
to accompany you through thunders
or a drunken butler
singing to his ukulele.

No matter, there are lessons
in the associations, and sadder
to miss the chance to learn
how much we have in common
than to wander the island alone.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Shakespeare.  I know.  I am obsessed.  I am compiling a list of reasons why your child needs to study Shakespeare to put into an article the next time I have some breathing space to research and write.  Meanwhile, after having watched the LMH production of The Tempest with me last night, Joss (6yo) corrected my Shakespeare reference.  I thought I was quoting Stefano as I drank my smoothie, “That’s a scurvy tune to play at a funeral.  Well, here’s my comfort!” But Joss interrupted me: “No, Mom.  It’s ‘That’s a scurvy tune to play at a man’s funeral.'”  Can you see me smiling?  We’ll work on the sublimer references another day.  For now, they want to play Stefano and Trinculo.  And no wonder.
2. Every single song Lynn led at church this morning, and Michelle’s reminder to consider what it means to be a community.
3. The children have neighborhood friends to play with.  It’s a dangerous hill between us, so we have to walk or drive them to each others’ houses, but they’re making friends in the community, and so–I guess–are we.  That’s a good feeling–to know more of the neighbors.  This is because they go to the local public school.  I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I am not an outsider at their school, but it’s good to be getting to know some people, and at least two families within a mile.
4. Rumors of a snake in the attic.  I know, but I would love to have a black snake keeping down the potential rodent populations.  The two kindergartners came downstairs today with a story of having seen a rattlesnake.  I figured they must have seen a black snake.  The more reasonable dad-figure supposes it was wires and cables.  Still, it’s a lovely little witchy idea, to imagine one has a snake in the attic.  Feels like a blessing.
5. This breath.  And this one.

May we walk  in Beauty!

Awash

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write an across the sea poem.  Here’s a haiku:

Alas!  I’m awash
in this sea of a season.
I’ll drown in that green.

Gratitude List:
1. Ferns unfurling
2. YWCA and its anti-racism work.  I was proud to support it by joining the Race today.
3. Shakespeare.  I am awash in his poetry.
4. The way the streetlight turned the new leaves on those trees by the Rutt building to a fairy golden.
5. Reading books with the kids in the new fort that Jon built out by the United Melvin Hall.

May we walk in Beauty!