Poetry Prompts

Lost Luck

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a luck poem. I’m having fun playing with internal rhyme and watching how it drives the line forward, how it pushes into the meaning of the following line. It’s almost like putting a puzzle together, and almost like following a large willful dog on a leash.

Where do you go to find your lost luck?
Look where it settles in ditches,
and hitches itself into trees,
where it sees through the mists
into the distance and takes the long view.

Watch how it grew when you thought
you had bought the last morsel of hope,
how the rope which had bound you
dissolved from around you, and you
suddenly found yourself once again free.

Would you be here if not for the seeking,
the desperate pleading when all seemed so lost,
when all hope was tossed into the whirlwind,
the promises hindered, the heart’s desire stuck,
and then here you are, free to seek for fresh luck.

Gratitude List:
1. Student delightfully self-congratulating a Duolingo success: “Yes, Grrrl! You got it!”
2. This morning’s autumn mist on the fields between Marietta and Mt. Joy.
3. I never know what is going to draw a whole class into discussion. I try every angle I can, and sometimes, everyone is suddenly jumping in, on fire with ideas. Today was one of those days in our upper division discussion about My Antonia. They had had enough background already in social studies classes regarding “Manifest Destiny” (idea and painting) that even my quietest introvert pushed himself up out of his chair and came up to the front of the room to point out his ideas about the painting. (YESSSSS!)
4. Analyzing characterization through the lens of the D and D alignment chart
5. Playing with words
May we walk in Beauty!

“Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love’s path is communication.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.” ―Gandalf

“When I stopped trying to change you, you changed me.” ―Rachel Macy Stafford

“When will the change begin? When will it start to happen? We have waited so long and prayed so long, when will the light begin to shine in this conflicted world? Our answer is: when we each begin to see it in ourselves. When we believe and not despair, when we love and not fear, when we give and not take – then we will see the change start to happen, and happen all around us. The answer is already here, within, waiting for us to find it.” —Steven Charleston

“When Teresa of Avila was asked what she did in prayer, she replied, ‘I just allow myself to be loved.'” —Anthony de Mello

“I never lose. I either win or I learn.” —Nelson Mandela

“If you have never been called an incorrigible, defiant, impossible woman… have faith. There is yet time.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Hope for the Best

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

The prompt today at Robert Brewer’s blog is to write a (blank) for (blank) poem. I am letting it be my invitation to play with sounds today:

Hoping for the Best

always hoping
hope against hope
just groping for hope
hanging from a thin rope

waiting for a train
sitting in the rain
train upon train of thought
making me insane

seeking a reason
in a season of reasons
speaking of treason
in a fit of high pique

going for broke
stoking a last hope
quoting a provoking quote
invoking the ghost

Gratitude List:
1. Have you read Julian Is a Mermaid? What a sweet, sweet book. What a tender and understanding abuela.
2. Friends in Scotland are posting pictures of their trip, and I am loving traveling vicariously.
3. Red oaks! Red, red, red, red, red oaks!
4. Living in the flames of the colors of the trees in this season
5. Talking to one of my young friends today about how she writes stories. I love watching kids catch the writing and reading bug!
May we walk in Beauty!

“Through a process of perpetual discernment and “prayer unceasing” we may dive into the well of each faith and emerge with the treasure that connects us all.” —Mirabai Starr

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” —Carl Sagan

“If the Rhine, the Yellow, the Mississippi rivers are changed to poison, so too are the rivers in the trees, in the birds, and in the humans changed to poison, almost simultaneously. There is only one river on the planet Earth and it has multiple tributaries, many of which flow through the veins of sentient creatures.” —Thomas Berry

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” —Kurt Vonnegut

‪”So much of bird flight is really expert falling, slipping into that delicate space within the argument between gravity and air resistance. That natural alchemy transforms a plummet into a glide. Someday, I hope to learn to fail like birds fall.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Reading and writing cannot be separated. Reading is breathing in; writing is breathing out.”

“For a Star to be born,
there is one thing that must happen;
a nebula must collapse.
So collapse.
Crumble.
This is not your Destruction.
This is your birth.” —Zoe Skylar

The Things She Said

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt at the Writer’s Digest poetry blog is to write an odd poem. I was feeling uninspired, so I decided to just started typing and let myself mostly free-associate. It ended up not really being as odd as I thought it might be, and it kind of hangs together surprisingly well. I think I sort of made up a story. . .

the last thing
she said before she left
was something about
how memory evades interpretation
how the ends don’t always
justify the meanings
how the sparkle in your eyes
seemed to have dimmed over time
because of the way the Old Ones
never wanted to reveal themselves

the first thing she said
when she returned was
that she had never known anyone
who reminded her so much
of her long-lost lover as you
on the day when you stood
in the dark garden and swore
allegiance to the moon

the way she looked at you
the way she her eyes drifted off
to the side of the frame when you
took that portrait someone hung
in the gallery on the corner
of Seventh and Lime

the way you could never seem
to say her name without
the briefest pause beforehand
as though you were forgetting
or reluctant to commit the act
of resurrecting her memory

Gratitude List:
1. We saw one of the white squirrels in Palmyra today! It was in a yard with two crows. It looked like they were having a meeting
2. Chocolate cake. I am working so hard to keep my sugar under control, but I am also not living a life of complete self-deprivation, and that was good cake
3. I think I am mostly over the achiness of the Covid/flu vaccine double whammy
4. Just hanging out here with the kid and the cats
5. Pumpkin soup and sauteed cauliflower
May we walk in Beauty!

“It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.” —Leonard Cohen

Denise Levertov:
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.

I have seen
The fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes
found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched–but not because
she grudged the water,
only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
The fountain is there among its scalloped
grey and green stones,
it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
—Leonard Cohen

“Remember that day in the woods
when everything was so dark, so dreary
and you were so terrifyingly alone?

How can it be that these are the same woods
and you the same soul
and everything shines so,
and everything is filled with life?” —Beth Weaver-Kreider

“Acquiring problems is a fundamental human need. It’s as crucial to your well-being as getting food, air, water, sleep, and love. You define yourself–indeed, you make yourself–through the riddles you attract and solve. The most creative people on the planet are those who frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers.” —Rob Brezsny

“We are free-falling into the future on a bed of broken symbols.” —attributed to Joseph Campbell

“We aren’t disturbing the peace. We’re disturbing the war.” —protest sign

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, but the most important part is not to be afraid.”

Little Cat

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a character poem. I just started writing what came to mind, and suddenly I was writing about my cat Winky. She was a fae character.

When you think of me, she said,
think of how the sun seemed
to want to run its rays
through my fur like fingers.

She was a winsome creature,
more mermaid than cat, sitting
on her rock in the middle of the creek,
tail bobbing in the bubbling current,
tempting the minnows.

More fairy even than mermaid she was,
denizen of the worlds between,
liminal cat, walker-between-worlds,
always her own being, ephemeral.

Her magic was the airy kind, twinkling and
sparkling in the wind, a bird
which materializes out of a breeze,
a raven changing form to become a butterfly,
a piece of milkweed fluff making little
chiming bells as it wafts past.

Sometimes I see her in the dreamrealm,
a band of chortling fairy children
dancing on the green grass in her wake,
her body whole again, her wise eyes blinking
in greeting, her fur ruffled by fingers of sun.

Gratitude List:

1. Gabe and Solly. I’m dog-sitting tonight for the sweetest pair of beagly boys.

2. Textures and textiles

3. Stories

4. Chocolate

5. Rilke

May we walk in Beauty!

“We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.” ―James Baldwin
*****
“Poets are kind of like—it’s a bad metaphor, but—canaries in a coal mine. They have a sense for things that are in the air. Partly because that’s what they do—they think about things that are going on—but partly because they take their own personal experience and see how that fits in with what they see in the world. A lot of people might think that poetry is very abstract, or that it has to do with having your head in the clouds, but poets, actually, walk on the earth. They’re grounded, feet-first, pointing forward. They’re moving around and paying attention at every moment.” —Don Share
*****
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” —Toni Morrison
*****
“…Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.”
—from “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)” by Wendell Berry
*****
Morning Prayer
by Phillip Newell
In the silence of the morning
your Spirit hovers over the brink of the day
and a new light pieces the darkness of the night.
In the silence of the morning
life begins to stir around me
and I listen for the day’s utterances.
In earth, sea and sky
and in the landscape of my own soul
I listen for utterances of your love, O God.
I listen for utterances of your love.

Directions

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt at The Writer’s Digest poetry blog is to write a directions poem. I love working with the cardinal directions and their correspondences with the four sacred elements. Still, when I read this prompt, I decided it was for directions for the sacred grove.

Take the road up the hill through the golden wood
and make a dogleg turn at the crest of the the ridge
to wander down again on the other side.

There will be thirteen horses in the field
behind you and three placid steers to your left.
Down a sudden steepness, another solitary horse
will look up from his ruminations before you pass
the lily pond, whose queen is a koi fish
the tangerine shade of sun as it sets over the ridge.

Make a left after the gingerbread treehouse,
after the white house set into the hillside.
Leave your car and walk up the hill behind the red barn
through the high grass. There will be pear trees
on your left, and a white-throated sparrow
will sing in the sycamore behind you.

A pathway will lead you up the hillside
where you will turn to your right up a grassy lane
between pear trees, and you will smell the musk
of the fox who protects the grove which you seek.

Pause a moment before you enter the circle
and listen to the distant call of the phoebe,
wait until the shadow of the vulture crosses the sun,
then step into the shelter of the grove
and let the silence surround you.

Gratitude List:
1. The trusting nature of cats
2. Looking forward to breakfast tomorrow with colleagues
3. The red tree behind the school takes my breath away
4. All of us hanging out in the living room together–somebody is snoring behind the couch
5. Watching students catch fire with the love of reading. I have a student who has been very honest about the fact that she doesn’t like to read, that she has never read a non-graphic-novel on her own. She has been so obsessed with our class reader, The Maze Runner, that today after we finished it, she asked if she could start the second book in the series instead of writing. She read with focus and energy for half an hour straight. I’m so proud of her.
May we walk in Beauty!

“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” —Carl Sagan

“But this moment, you’re alive. So you can just dial up the magic of that at any time.” —Joanna Macy

“I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” —Vincent van Gogh

“The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.” —Emma Goldman

“Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love ideal.” —Sark

“Everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything exists, only because I love.” —Leo Tolstoy

“Love is a great beautifier.” —Louisa May Alcott

“Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.” —Erica Jong

“Fall in love over and over again every day. Love your family, your neighbors, your enemies, and yourself. And don’t stop with humans. Love animals, plants, stones, even galaxies.” —Frederic and Mary Ann Brussa

“I will start from here. That is an interesting spiritual statement when you stop to think about it. It means that whatever happened before, and whatever may happen in time to come, the past and the future are not the sacred space I actually inhabit. That space is right here, right now, in whatever condition I find myself. This is what I have to work with. This is where change and hope begin for me. Recognizing my location on the map of the holy is one more way that I claim my place of blessing and announce to the universe: I will start from here.” —Steven Charleston

” ‘They kept going, because they were holding onto something.’
‘What are we holding onto, Sam?’
‘There’s still good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.’ “
—Frodo and Sam

“Somewhere deep in the forest of grief
there is a waterfall where all your tears may flow
over mossy rocks, under watchful pines.”
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.” —E. B. White

“There are certain things, often very little things, like the little peanut, the little piece of clay, the little flower that cause you to look WITHIN – and then it is that you see the soul of things.”
—George Washington Carver

Sentence on the High Wire

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Write a sentence poem, he says, and I am an English teacher, and so I took the only way out of this poetic escape room that I knew how:

Out on the high wire,
an introductory prepositional phrase
steps carefully over a verb and its gentle adverb
into a prepositional phrase with a compound object
and a further series of prepositional phrases,
its feet poised for the absolute phrases,
its absolute phrases bunching together, and

LEAPS

into a surprising compound predicate.
(The crowd goes wild!)

Gratitude List:
1. Meeting people I’ve met online IRL. Today’s connection was beautiful and sweet, and her children brought me sprigs of mountain mint
2. Mountain mint–such a gently invigorating aroma
3. This happy lamp–staving off the time change blues
4. Uji (millet porridge)–I think I am finally getting the hang of the fermenting process–it tastes like childhood memories
5. The way the autumn sun hits the tips of the oak trees in the morning and evening just as it makes its entry into and exit from the hollow
May we walk in Beauty!

“Tyrants fear the poet.” —Amanda Gorman

“Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.” ―Brian Jacques

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” ―Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” ―Rumi

“Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.”
―Bob Dylan

“To open our eyes, to see with our inner fire and light, is what saves us. Even if it makes us vulnerable. Opening the eyes is the job of storytellers, witnesses, and the keepers of accounts. The stories we know and tell are reservoirs of light and fire that brighten and illuminate the darkness of human night, the unseen. They throw down a certain slant of light across the floor each morning, and they throw down also its shadow.” —Linda Hogan

What do you do
when the gods of the dreamings
offer you maps for the journey?

How will you answer
when the night-folk cry out:
“Give us the hope of our meanings!”
―Beth Weaver-Kreider

Autumn Haiku

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write either a big or a little poem. We’ve spent the evening (after voting) at the cross country banquet, and I am tired, so a small poem will have to suffice. I have been going back and forth about whether that last line should read “leaving” or “going.” I decided on the more pathos-filled version.

autumn dark descends
a plane drones beneath the stars
someone’s leaving home

Gratitude List:
1. These coaches and all the time they give to our children
2. When I brought home a half peck of apples yesterday, someone in the family did a happy apple dance
3. Got home and sat on the couch to write my poem, and immediately had a cat pressed against each hip
4. I love when my books weave together. I am just about to finish My Antonia with a class, and I’m listening to The Personal Librarian. Although they’re in slightly different time periods, Willa Cather lived at the time when Belle da Costa Greene was JP Morgan’s private librarian.
5. People who work for justice
May we walk in Beauty!

“The stories I’m trying to write, and which I want to promote, are stories that contribute to the stability of my own culture, stories that elevate, that keep things from flying apart.” —Barry Lopez

“What the world wants, and people need, are people who believe in Something—Something that will lead them to the good, the beautiful, the true, and the universal.” —Richard Rohr

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” —James Baldwin

“I am not talking about giving our hearts over to despair. I wonder if we can train our hearts, intentionally, like athletes who train for a marathon, to bear the load without crumpling under the weight. I think that’s what the children need from us, for us to bear them, bear the stories, hold them as though they were our own, to be prepared to act at any moment for any one of them within our reach. I think the times call for hearts strong enough to be tender, to bleed without weakening, to rage and protect and pray and hope without numbing out.

“I don’t think it has to be a choice. We don’t have to choose between the closed heart and the broken heart. We can be awake and yet not despair. It’s worth a try.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider

“If we are going to see real development in the world, then our best investment is in women.” —Desmond Tutu

“Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.” —Alice Walker

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” —Marcus Aurelius

Found on a T-shirt: “I am totally happy and not dangerous mostly.”

“Part of the tragedy of our present culture is that all our attention is on the outer, the physical world. And yes, outer nature needs our attention; we need to act before it is too late, before we ravage and pollute the whole ecosystem. We need to save the seeds of life’s diversity. But there is an inner mystery to a human being, and this too needs to be rescued from our present wasteland; we need to keep alive the stories that nourish our souls. If we lose these seeds we will have lost a connection to life’s deeper meaning—then we will be left with an inner desolation as real as the outer.” —Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Adrienne Rich: “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility of more truth around her.”

“I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands.” —Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

Better Left Unsaid

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Time change. It’s just time, just sun, just nightfall, just change. I tell myself this, again and again. Time for the happy lamp.

Today’s Prompt over at Writer’s Digest is to write a poem title “Better _______.”

better left unsaid
better said

best be gone I say begone
best step up now and do your work
best lurk in corners till the courage comes upon you
best fill your leaky pockets with compliments and rice

better red or midnight blue
better screw the lightbulb in the disco ball
better haul the garbage to the garbage dump
better pump the handle on the ancient water pump

best to do the thing you must
and leave the rest to gather rust
best say the necessary prayers
and acquaint yourself with silence.

better learn the difference
between what’s better said
and better left unsaid

Gratitude List:
1. How the sun trickles into the room on afternoons in autumn.
2. The poetry of Layli Long Soldier–We loved exploring her poem Obligations 2 in class today. It expands the way we think about the line in writing.
3. People who swim deeply, deeply, who explore the furthest reaches of Self.
4. Starting over. Resetting. Trying again. Revising.
5. Apples!
May we walk in Beauty!

“People who love the divine go around with holes in their hearts, and inside the hole is the universe.” —Peter Kingsley from the Dark Places of Wisdom

“The practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination.” —bell hooks

“When men imagine a female uprising, they imagine a world in which women rule men as men have ruled women.” ―Sally Kempton

“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” —Mae Jemison (Astronaut/Medical Doctor)

Adrienne Rich: “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility of more truth around her.”

“Part of the tragedy of our present culture is that all our attention is on the outer, the physical world. And yes, outer nature needs our attention; we need to act before it is too late, before we ravage and pollute the whole ecosystem. We need to save the seeds of life’s diversity. But there is an inner mystery to a human being, and this too needs to be rescued from our present wasteland; we need to keep alive the stories that nourish our souls. If we lose these seeds we will have lost a connection to life’s deeper meaning—then we will be left with an inner desolation as real as the outer.” —Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

“Walked for half an hour in the garden. A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains – a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.” —Henri Frederic Amiel

There is a legend that has its roots buried deep inside the prehistoric culture of these lands. It is a myth that was seeded before the stories were anchored onto the page, before rigid systems of belief tied gods and spirits into names and form, even before the people were persuaded from paths of individual responsibility into hierarchies of power. This story has been fluid and flowing, changing shape and growing over many thousands of years. It is a story of ancestors and a deep relationship with the ancient land. It is a story of memories that permeate stone and wood to rest within the body of the earth. This legend is too old to be defined by history and therefore we are not limited in our own remembering of it; creative recollection lies at the heart of our very best tales.

Memory may arrive at odd moments and in unexpected forms. Recognition may unravel along strange paths. Wherever the wild reaches through the land, we may touch the edges of this story. We start to tease out a thread, then pick and pull until first a fragment of colour, then a whole strand of story, is revealed. Now we peel away the layers, glimpse the traces of a design, watch a pattern grow until an entire story emerges, then a cycle of stories, and now we are unwinding the fabric of our ancestors’ lives.” —Carolyn Hillyer

We stumble on the journey, O God.
We lose heart along the way.
We forget your promises and blame one another.
Refresh us with the springs of your spirit in our souls
and open our senses to your guiding presence
that we may be part of the world’s healing this day,
that we may be part of the world’s healing.
—John Philip Newell

Golden Flowers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Robert Brewer’s prompt for today, at the Writers Digest poetry blog, is to write a book-inspired poem. I’m not quite sure where this poem comes from, but the poem itself is a book, divided into chapters:

Chapter 1
You found her in the garden
flirting with the goldenrod.
The next day she vanished
before your very eyes
in the sparkling autumn sun.

Chapter 2
You searched for her through
each successive November.
You ran down time’s vast corridors
calling her name into doorways.

Chapter 3
It was in the church ruins
where you finally found her
singing an ancient hymn of Inanna
to the ravens nesting on the altar.

Chapter 4
She did not run or try to hide
but she spoke your name
and the golden flowers burst
suddenly from the cracks in the floor.

Gratitude List:
1. Someone told me today that I bring with me the sense that it’s okay to be weird, and that might be one of the best compliments I have ever received.
2. Transformations
3. The vulture with wings open on the old snag on 30
4. Oak leaves falling like rain
5. So many circles of beautiful people!
May we walk in Beauty!

“Safety is not the absence of threat.
It is the presence of connection.” —Gabor Maté

“Mercy is the willingness to enter into the chaos of another.” —James Keenan

Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, you are free.” —Jim Morrison

“You need not wade through the mists and bogs to reach the moon.
You need not climb a ladder of cobweb.
You need not ride the stallions that wicker in the sea’s pounding surf.

Draw back the curtain and open the window.
Breathe the bracing air and listen:
The whinny of an owl, the click of the bat,
The grunt of a buck and the distant roar of the train.

The full moon will spill a milky road before you.
That is all the pathway you will need.”
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

“The word is the making of the world.” —Wallace Stevens

“Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

“The leaves of the tree become as pages of the Sacred Book to one who is awake.”
—Hazrat Inayat Khan

“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” —Albert Einstein

“I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.” —Coretta Scott King

“When you feel the suffering of every living thing in your own heart, that is consciousness.” —Bhagavad Gita

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world….”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, ‘Yes, the stars always make me laugh!’ And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you…”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.”
―Naomi Shihab Nye

Catching Memory

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a Catching Poem. This is a little rough, but I like how it starts to say what I mean, so I’ll put it here as a place-holder today, with hopes to revise it when I get a chance.

How can I know if I’m remembering things
as they happened to me or how they were told to me?
I come from of family of memory-keepers and
storytellers, and the branches of my own memory
are caught in the branches of others,
the narrative threads tangled in the repetitions,
the colors and textures shifting from telling
to telling, so that certain memories are like layers of film,
each slightly different from the one below,
the edges blurring and the colors deepening
as the layers blend, the final picture an inaccurate
representation and a perfect idealization of the actual event,
clearer and more distinct than the moment of happening,
gaining a tenderness in the telling and retelling
that holds a truth more true than one person’s memory can catch.

Gratitude List:
1. Anticipating sleep. I have insomnia occasionally, but it’s always middle of the night insomnia. I almost always fall asleep immediately when my head hits the pillow. I love that feeling of letting sleep take me like a wave.
2. Winter sweaters. I got the rest of my winter sweaters out of the attic today. I love my sweaters.
3. Uji. I’ve been fermenting millet to make Tanzanian uji for breakfast. I love the sour taste.
4. Fall colors. Are the colors more beautiful, deeper, more rich, than usual? I think they are especially beautiful this year.
5. Art and drumming. I went with my friend Christine to PAVAA art gallery for a drumming and art show tonight. The drummer put paint on her drumsticks and drummed a painting onto a canvas she draped over her drums. Another woman, on a set of congas, did a spontaneous spoken word riff on the colors the drummer was laying down.
May we walk in Beauty!

Saturday’s Falling and Getting Up Again:
“Both when we fall and when we get up again, we are kept in the same precious love.” ―Julian of Norwich

“What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved–what then?” ―Carl Jung

“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.”
―Eleanor Roosevelt

“If I had influence with the good fairy, I would ask that her gift to each child be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
―Rachel Carson

“Your problem is you’re too busy holding onto your unworthiness.” ―Ram Dass

“In giving of yourself, you will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love.” ―Cesar Chavez

“While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
―Eugene V. Debs

“I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too. Ma Joad: I don’t understand it, Tom. Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but – just somethin’ I been thinkin’ about.”
―Tom Joad, from the movie Grapes of Wrath

“And don’t we all, with fierce hunger, crave a cave of solitude, a space of deep listening—full of quiet darkness and stars, until we hear a syllable of God echoing in the core of our hearts?”
—Macrina Wiederkehr

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” —Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

“The way that I understand it, dreaming is nature naturing through us. Just as a tree bears fruit or a plant expresses itself in flowers, dreams are fruiting from us. The production of symbols and story is a biological necessity. Without dreams, we could not survive. And though it is possible to get by without remembering our dreams, a life guided and shaped by dreaming is a life that follows the innate knowing of the earth itself. As we learn to follow the instincts of our inner wilderness, respecting its agreements and disagreements, we are also developing our capacity for subtlety. This sensitivity is what makes us more porous and multilingual, bringing us into conversation with the many languages of the world around us.” — Toko-pa Turner