Poetry Prompts

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write about secrets:

Sing me that song,
the one you wrote
about the woman who
hid from her life
like a lynx in the wood.

Inscrutable.

She guarded her secrets
and melted into her shame,
hiding the flame in her heart,
holding the mystery of her name,
revealing herself to no one.

Remember the ending,
the way that she bent herself
outward one day,
opened her throat like a bird’s
and spoke a single clear note
into the morning,
how she blazed forth,
how she stretched outward,
how she dawned.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Daffodils!  When I got to school this morning, the first little ones were just opening their cups.  This afternoon I got home and the ones out front of our house were open, too.
2. Ideas–how they build and grow, build and grow
3. Chai
4. Color and texture, rhythm and pattern
5. You

May we walk in Beauty!

Here’s to the Fool!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Today’s poetry prompt is to write about resistance:

I have seen the way the world is weighted,
heard you murmuring the words
distress, despair, disgrace,
marked the way it seems the fates
conspire to place you
underneath the wagon’s wheel.

If I can try one phrase to bless
this wretched space in which you rest
between the gales and squalls,
let it be this:

May your soul be a sail.

Your spirit will resist the winds that drive you
into dusty earth or claw you from the cliff-face.

May you catch that wind and rise.
May you surprise yourself in flight.

Gratitude List:
1. The Chalice Labyrinth.  Balancing my light and my shadow.  Finding my way across the divide between the different parts of me.
2. Six deer silhouetted in the dusky moment just before dawn.
3. And then the sunrise.  I am learning my colors: magenta, chartreuse, indigo, aquamarine, tangerine.  And there’s one that’s not quite peach and not quite tangerine, something I can’t quite name yet.
4. Walking over the fields with my guys: Jon, the boys, and Fred the Cat.  And that bird: peregrine, perhaps.  Or osprey.  Long crooked wings, and white beneath, sweeping over the fields in the spring breeze.
5. Saying yes to the new thing, new growth, new learning.  Trusting, like the Fool, in the grace of wind to catch me in the leap.

May we walk in Beauty!

Calling it a Month

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt–last one of the month–is “calling it a day.”  I really love these challenges, pushing myself to write even when I don’t feel inspired, to put something out there whether I am ready or not.  Sometimes I feel like I just toss out whatever scrap I can come up with, but occasionally that panic to not publicly embarrass myself seems to draw out poems I never knew I had in me.  So while I am looking forward to the rest, I’ll miss the challenge and the thrill of the day poem.

Calling it a Day

I came here because I thought–
oh never mind.  You see,

it’s been on my mind to–
well, you wouldn’t understand.

The band is packing up.
We’re totally out of peanuts, and
someone spilled wine
on my yellow dress.

I thought the dancing was fun.
Didn’t you like the dancing?
And the music kept it lively.

Were you about to say something?
Oh, I thought I heard you start to–
it doesn’t really matter now, does it?

Good night.
You sleep well, too.
Drive safely, now.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Secret poems sent to me by FB message and snail mail.  My heart is full.
2. Mirror, reflection, turning it back
3. Seeing through
4. Book Faeries
5. Networks

May we walk in Beauty!

Sometimes it Works

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is in honor of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died last week, to write a Magical/Realism poem.

“The doctor,” she told me,
“said it’s simply the effects
of anxiety upon my body.”

Half a dozen tiny blue birds
dripped from her lips
as she spoke.

“It’s a physiological response.
It’s all in my head,
but not in my head.”

She heaved a heavy sigh
and a small blue cloud of birds
issued forth and settled,
wings rustling, on her shoulders.

“The doctor recommended
relaxation exercises.
Grounding.  Yoga.  Breathing.”

She closed her eyes
and inhaled deeply.
As she let out her breath,
a fat blue flamingo
bounced onto the rug.

She shrugged.
“Sometimes it works.”

 

Gratitude List:
1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. The words of Vaclav Havel: Doing a thing not because you have hope that it will change things, but because it makes sense.
3. The spirited activists of Lancaster.  Thank you for making your voices heard.  No pipeline!
4. Breathing
5. Step by step by step

May we walk in Beauty!

Un-Settling

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Faerie Tree

Today’s prompt is to write a settled poem.  Thought I would try a sestina today. This is in honor of all those who will be protesting at the Lancaster County government offices tomorrow, protesting the proposed pipeline that will cut through Lancaster County, dangerously close to the Susquehanna River and through wildflower preserves and wildlands and the beautiful Tucquan Glen.

This morning, a single shaft of sun
settles on an opening curl of fern.
A hermit thrush yodels, breaking the silence;
a salamander lays her eggs in a vernal pool;
trout lilies, may apple, and trillium come alive in the breeze;
and a gravid squirrel prepares her birthing nest.

Spring has settled into this glen, this nest
of a valley dappled with sun
where a dread new word is whispered on the breeze:
“Pipeline.” Listen to me, seed and egg and fern.
Hear me. Let the message sink into the pools
and the shadows in these hollows.  It shatters our silence.

The time is past for us to be settled and silent.
Safety will no longer be found nestled
in these hills, in these pools.
The trees will be torn out, your secrets open to the sun,
the yellow machines will crush the ferns,
and diesel fumes will waft on the breeze.

Tell it far.  Let it float on the wild winds and breezes:
We must not stay silent!
Awake and rise up like the unfurling fern!
Un-settle yourselves to protect the wildness.
Be fierce and penetrating as the sun.
Let action ripple outward like circles in a disturbed pool.

We must work together, pull together, pool
our energies.  Tell it to the breeze.
Marshall the forces of our hearts, our will, our reason.
Protect and preserve the settled silence.
Make it safe for the den, the perch, the nest,
for the spider, the swallow, the fern.

We want no pipeline, only the gentle swaying of the fern.
Tell them No.  We want to see the salamanders in the pools
in the glen, the intricate basket of oriole’s nest,
the wild honeybees, the lady slipper, the melodious breeze.
Tell them a firm and settled No. We seek the solitude and silence
of the unscarred valley dappled by the sun.

Gratitude List:
1. The snow of blossoms from the pear tree outside the window
2. The sound of rain on the roof
3. Sun salutations
4. There are always more choices
5. Taking action

May we walk in Beauty!

Monsters

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a monster poem.  We’re back to watching Mad Men on Netflix these days, season 6.  This one is sort of inspired by Don Draper, and by characters like him.

Vampire

Oh, that one.
He looked so dapper,
and spoke with such charm.
A family man, they all said.

He sacrificed everything
for his brilliant children,
and more for his wonderful wife.

He played it so well,
even she who thought she knew him best,
had no sense of the truth

until he’d drained her dry.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The smells of springtime in the hollow
2. Lush blankets of purple dead nettle coming up in the rows of stubble in the cornfields
3. Reading and reading and reading with my children–just finishing Jennifer Murdley’s Toad, another gift from one of our book faeries.
4. Memory and forgetting
5. Concentric circles of community.

May we walk in Beauty!

May the Waters All Run Free

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Yesterday’s prompt was to write a poem about water.  This is too big a subject for one day’s musing.  This poem will be a place-holder, an early draft.

May the Waters All Run Free

Remember your waters, children,
remember your waters.
Cherish the waters you come from.
Cherish the waters you belong to.

Listen, every day, for the flow,
the whoosh and shush
of the waters that run
in the rivers in your body.

Gather the waters that fall,
that run in streams down your roof.
Sprinkle them on the earth
and the thirsty green world
like a baptism, like a blessing.

Stand in the rain with your hands outstretched
and your face turned toward the sky.
Soak it in like a plant.

Find your rivers, your creeks.
Know them and speak to them.
Become a watcher of rivers,
a guardian of flow.
Tend them by your observation.
Let every river you cross
receive your attention, your benediction.

Remember your waters, children.
Remember your waters.

Immerse yourself in lakes and oceans.
Let water hold you, raise you.
Let water buoy you up.
Give over your control
to the arms of mother ocean.

Wander the borderlands
between the solid earth and water.
Learn the names and voices
of the ones who live there,
in the spaces between.

Walk back in your memories
to your very first waters,
the rivers and lakes of your childhood,
the ponds and the puddles and creeks.
Then walk further back and remember
the water you came from,
the amniotic sea where you were formed,
where you took shape.

Remember your waters, children.
Remember your waters.
May the waters all run free.
May the waters all run clean.

Talk to the Wind

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Today’s prompt is to write a “Tell it to the (blank)” poem.

Tell it to the fierce and rowdy wind, my sisters.
Tell your story to the little skipping breezes.
Tell it to the leaves as they scuttle down the mountain
to eddy in the shadows of the hollow.

Tell it to the mockingbird,my brothers.
Tell your trouble to the crow, the wren, the gull.
Tell it to the wild geese, whose message
will reach my ears as they fly above my valley.

I will whisper them to the willows.
I will reveal them to the prayerful gathering
of ferns unfurling by the stone wall.
I will wrap them in scraps of blue silk.

I will hang them from the branches
of my guardians, the dogwood trees,
and etch them on the leaves of the sycamore.
I will place them in bowls of glowing stones.

Tell it to the soft enfolding darkness
as the sun settles below your horizon.
I will watch for your stories by sunrise,
as the dawn washes over the hills.

P1020078

Gratitude List:
1.  Poem in Your Pocket Day: The farmer/poet’s heart is happy with all the shy children who came to read me poems in exchange for a packet of lettuce seedlings.
2.  Kind words, kind hearts.  Thank you, my friends.
3.  Fred the Cat
4.  Incentive
5.  That new featherbed–it’s like sleeping wrapped in a cloud.

May we walk in Beauty!

Saying Goodbye

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Winky and Fred

Nikhita “Winky” Weaver-Kreider (2000ish-April 23, 2014), left in photo

Tonight we said goodbye to our dear friend and companion of ten years, Winky.

Gratitude List:
1. A compassionate vet and nurses and office staff
2. Hundreds of swallows dipping over the River, catching insects and chittering happily
3. Two white snowy egrets, flying slowly upriver, low to the water, and then suddenly upward and into the sun of the dying day
4. Last night’s rainbow, the bridge for a small cat to cross on her journey
5. My cheer-up brigade: “Mom, Winky’s dead, but now she’s in Aslan’s Country, so she can talk!”

May we walk in Beauty.

Today’s poetry prompt is to write about a location.  I have a visual love affair with the photography of Kilian Schonberger.  Every time he posts a new photo on Facebook, I let my fairy tale mind roam into the picture and let it tell me a story of some sort.  Today’s poem is based on his photo of trees in a bog.  Look up his work.  It’s incredibly magical.

I saw the photo and his reference to is as being about “becoming and passing away,” and wrote the poem before Winky died.  It feels much deeper with meaning now.

Remember the day
you stood in the mud
at the edge of the bog

and watched the slow shiver
of the birches
reflected in the water,

how you saw
the faerie creature caught
there in the middle of the pool,

between the worlds
of visible and invisible,
how you waded out
into the muck to release her,

and saw–for the briefest of moments–
as she whisked out of sight,
the bright sun shining
through the door from the fields of Faerie?

Walking the High Wire

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s double prompt is to write a pessimistic/optimistic poem.

this one is for the ancestors,
the mothers (especially mine),
and all my many sisters

We walk the high wire
between hopelessness and hope,
between rage and joy.
Perhaps it’s only stories
that will save us.

We pray to be empty.
We pray to let go.
We pray to give away
attachment to outcomes.

In one hand, we hold a golden cymbal.
Its name is Despair.
The one in the other hand is Hope.
We wander the Earth
like Cassandra of Troy,
clashing them together.
They make a mighty noise
but no one seems to listen.

We sit in the space
between the cup half full
and the cup half empty,
knowing that neither will save us.
We pour out that water
upon the Earth,
upon the seeds
which will grow,
or not grow.
We tend them
all the same.

The work
the work
the work
is what matters.

Hearts open,
souls on fire,
we heed Pema,
we heed Vaclav:
we work because
it must be done,
not because we know
that it will save the world.

Listen to Wangari
we plant trees
we free the prisoners
we honor women

Listen to Jane
we notice
we listen
we honor the animals

Listen to Vandana
we save seeds
we scatter seeds
we honor seed and soil

Listen to Natasha
we grieve and mourn
we witness
we honor the wild

Listen to Leymah
we speak our truth
we honor the scars
we heal

Listen to your mother
we feed and nurture
we protect
we honor Wisdom

Walk that thin silver line
between the flame and the fire.
Be amazed,
be feral,
be wakeful.

Walk between the heartbeats.

Listen to the Earth
Listen to the Earth
Listen to the Earth

 

Gratitude List:
1. The work
2. Wisdom
3. Carnelian
4. The ancestors
5. The mothers and sisters

May we walk in Beauty!