Poetry Prompts

Abandon Hope

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s Prompt is to use a standard phrase for the title of your poem, and then to respond to that.  I have to start working on these earlier in the day, before my brain starts to shut down.

Abandon Hope all Ye Who Enter Here
with apologies and thanks to Pema Chodron and Margaret Wheatley

“Hope. . . is not the conviction that something will turn out well,
but the certainty that something makes sense regardless
of how it turns out.”  –Vaclav Havel

I have a fierce attachment to hope,
to that inward knowing
that this boat will stay afloat no matter what.

I have a deep-rooted, heavy-booted fear
that in this moment
we are in the very act of sinking.

Like they say, the hope keeps me living,
living in the middle of the fear,
and paralyzed to move,
lest my shift cause this bark to sink.

Perhaps the future demands not hope,
but willingness to sleep with uncertainty.
That we lay our heads on pillows of rock,
and though we know not whether the day will dawn,
sleep soundly through the storm.

Though we know the fight is likely useless,
onward we fight because it makes sense
to hold our ideals no matter what we face.

Oh, I’ll hold hope in my pocket–
uncoupled from its sticky twin–
like a shiny copper penny,
like a talisman.

 

 

Gratitude List:
1. Mockingbird is back on stage, in rare form, full of gossip and outlandish tales.  He got me this morning–I started to say, “Killdeer!” before he was off on a riff about cardinal, before I realized it was him.
2.  Chickweed pesto
3.  Windflower and speedwell
4.  Cloud constellations (a term coined by my younger child)
5.  Joss found my glasses in the field when I was sure that they were gone for good.  No scratches.  Whew.

May we walk in Beauty!

 

Prayer

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a poem about the Future.

To wait within the moment for the coming dawn,
To breathe the single breath of all that lives,
To walk the web on which we all belong,
To face the newborn day with love instead of fear.

To listen for the whisper of the Spirit’s wind,
To feel Creator’s heartbeat in the world around,
To hear the grace of the Beloved in my neighbor’s voice,
To embrace the sacred space between the past and change.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Red-breasted mergansers and northern shovelers
2.  Playing by the River with my boys
3.  When you’ve been feeling bad, it feels SO GOOD to feel good.
4.  Amy got me tickets to see Jane Goodall.   What a gift!
5.  Getting organized.

May we walk in Beauty!

Susquehanna Dawning

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Fred

Today I got a card in the mail from a friend.  There were bluebirds on the cover and it was full of poetry.  These.

The Poetry Prompt for today is to write a poem about Discovery.

Susquehanna Dawning

Stand just there on the sandy bank of the river.
There, where the water laps over the roots
of the ancient sycamore.  There, where the bridge
and the memory of a bridge run over the waters.

Listen for the rustle and murmur of dawning,
the whisper of wavelets, the groan of the trees,
the sudden wild call of robin: thrush of morning,
leading the dawn chorus, unwrapping the day.

What will you discover this daybreak, this borning?
What stories will otter bring you?  And heron?
What are the words that the river will give you
there, as the sun spreads the golden road before you?

 

Gratitude List:
1. A warm purring cat on my lap.
2. Kind words.  Always be kinder than necessary.  People are.  So often.
3.  Watching Looney Tunes with the kids.  How they laugh!
4. Getting real mail in the mailbox.  Not bills or Netflix or checks or flyers, but real mail.
5.  Guides

May we walk in Beauty!

How the World Began

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Welcome to National Poetry Month!

So much to do!  I was away from home all day today, so tomorrow I will inaugurate this year’s Poetree in my dogwood.
Stacia Fleegal of the poetry blog Versify offers a challenge to read a poem a day.  I won’t put all mine on videotape, but here’s today’s attempt.
I think I will try the April Poem-A-Day Challenge again.  Today’s prompt is a two-fer: Write a Beginning poem.  Write an Ending poem.

How the World Began

In the beginning, Spider
launched herself into the spring breeze
from a rattling stalk of dried nettle

toward a skinny maple sapling.
She missed the maple.  Landed,
light-foot, in a heap of leaves

gathered around its base.
A quick scuttle upward, launched again
and through the breeze once more

to nettle stalks this time, and
the gossamer cord caught.
Then launched herself once more

into the gentle breath of wind
until she’d spun herself a world,
until she had encompassed all.

In the end, Spider gathered strands
and wove herself a spirit cloth of silver thread
to catch the wandering dreams

of mockingbirds and wild geese
passing over the chilly meadow,
following tomorrow’s sunrise.

 

Gratitude List:

1.  Flicker calling from the treetops this morning
2.  The golden flank feathers of the pheasant who walked through my parents’ lawn this afternoon, and his squeaky screen-door squawk.
3.  The Fool, dancing on the edge, willing to take risks, to laugh lightly at herself, to seek adventure.
4.  Energy.  Taking responsibility for my own, learning to sense it, to listen for it, to watch, to shift it.
5.  The smoke ring that emerged from the palo santo smudge that Nicky used this morning, how it rose so languidly through the grapevines, twisted, turned for a moment into a baby dragon, and dissipated like a mist, like a wraith.

May we walk in Beauty!

In the Hall of the Disappearing Creatures

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

<Prompt 30:  Last One.  Write a Disappearing Poem> An interesting piece of synchronicity: someone declared today (Nov. 30) to be the International Day of Remembrance for Lost Species.

One black rhino falls on the Savannah.
Deep in shadowed jungles,
the Formosan clouded leopard
winks out of time.
Poor old Lonesome George,
the last Pinta Island Tortoise,
slowly ages to stone.  And gone.
Celia, the last Pyrenean Ibex, taking
one last breath beneath a quivering acacia
on a windswept, sunset plain.

The Japanese river otter.  The Liverpool Pigeon.
The Eastern cougar.  Javan Tiger.  Golden Toad.

The Ivory-Billed. . .don’t say it.
The Ivory. . .no, not yet.
Keep that door open yet a little longer.
Listen for the wheep and cluck
deep in the swamp.  Watch
for that flash of white through the mosses.

2013 November 210
From the State Museum of PA

Gratitude List:
1.  Hope
2.  Warmth
3.  Light
4.  Art
5.  This moment.

May we walk in Beauty.

Commercial

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

<Prompt 29: Write a Commercial Poem> Oy.  I’m tired.  Here’s a toss-off:

Face it.  You’re not good enough,
not clean enough, not nice enough,
not beautiful.

You need more stuff to fill you up,
to ease your grief, to fit your need,
to fill the hole.

Don’t you feel that blinding ache,
relentless need, the restless urge,
desire’s pull?

Just buy more stuff, just do your part
to keep the Corporation in the black,
to meet our goals.

Gratitude List:
1. Venus!  She is so big and bright she makes me want to grab my frankincense, saddle up the camels and slouch off to Bethlehem with the other rough beasts.
2. Day trip to the State Museum of PA.  We got a membership to all the state museums for half price, and free parking for the day, to boot.  It was wonderful and educational.
3. The Bird People of the Susquehannocks.  Carved as glyphs into the rocks into the middle of the river, wings spread and soaring.  Carved standing into shell and bone, wings folded, beaked faces watchful.
4. Reading Anne of Green Gables to the boys.
5. You.  Have I said that yet? I am so very grateful for you.

May we walk in Beauty.

All is Well

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

<Prompt 28: Write a Bird Poem>

Laughter hovers like a bird
in the listening air around us.
Chuckles like feathers
float around the room,
and all is well for this breath.
And for this one.

The air crackles and rustles
with the winged ones watching.
And all is well.
All is well for this moment.


Gratitude List:
1.  You.  Just You.
2.  Because how knowing you makes me be a better me.
3.  Because you make me see colors and hear sounds and taste flavors that I wouldn’t have understood without you.
4.  Because you make sense of things that I can’t make sense of.
5.  Because you ask the right questions, and don’t always have the answers, but sometimes you do.

May we walk together in Beauty.

Mt. Pisgah

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

<Prompt 27: Write a Local Poem>

It may feel like a secret,
like a spider hidden in shadow
in the corner by the bookcase,

but I see how your heart opens
again, like a flower, like the view
when the trees have shed

their summer dresses
and the view from Mt. Pisgah
opens toward the River.

The riot of green, then autumn,
though lush and rich, has hidden
the heart from the valley below,

and now, when the trunks stand bare,
the truth of the valley
is laid out before you.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Secret messages
2.  Rafiki’s Maandazis
3.  Conversations with strangers
4.  Pope Francis
5.  Hyssop and rose tea

May we walk in Beauty.

Always Free

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

<Prompt 26: Write a (Blank) Free, or Free (Blank) Poem, or both>

The poem that I wrote yesterday was in a Spanish form called shadorma.  Six lines, 3/5/3/3/7/5.  Today’s poem is also a shadorma.  I love the name.

You are free
to tell your story
as you please.
Always you
are free to shift the plot or
wander off the page.

2013 November 158 2013 November 149
The 1719 Hans Herr House and The Longhouse recreation

Gratitude List:
1.  Naps!  Especially this part: While I was napping on the couch, Joss found a blanket and carefully covered me up, then found another and fell asleep with it on the floor beside me.  When we woke up and I thanked him for taking such good care of his Mama, he walked over to me and kissed my hand.
2.  Parent-teacher conference.  Really, we have lucked out (seriously lucked out) with an amazing teacher for Ellis’s first year.  She likes his smile.  And his careful deliberation in his work.  And she loves to teach.
3.  Two people in my circles who have been on ventilators are breathing on their own, both waking up.  Thanks for all your prayers.  Recovery may be long and arduous, but the first bout of anxious waiting is coming to an end for their loved ones.
4.  Crossword puzzles
5.  Wool sweaters and hot tea

May we walk in Beauty.

No Angels

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

<Prompt 25: Take a poem written during this month and remix it.>  This will be a new and very concise version of November 16.

No angels
on ladders this time.
Only this:
One old man
wrestling me in the darkness,
telling me my name.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Ethiopian Food yesterday and the warmth and stimulation of the conversation around the table.  I am still warmed today.
2.  Watching these shiny youngsters grow and change.
3.  Hand and wrist warmers
4.  Clean floors.  The house can be sort of untidy, and I can have ten projects up in the air, but if my floors have been vacuumed, then I feel like something is accomplished.
5.  Homemade pizza.

May we walk in Beauty.