Lost Language

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s Poem-a-Day Prompt is to write a message poem.

Lost Language

A bark-stripped twig along the path
etched with the burrowers’ runes.

Creekside, the wide webbed prints
of heron’s cuneiform stamp.

Overhead, shifting shapes
of scripts in the migrating flock.

A scatter of leaves on the pavement.
The pattern of bees zipping through sun rays.

When did I unlearn this language?
When did I forget how to read this alphabet?

A message that slips out of memory
just as it reaches the back of my throat.

The last hazy image of a dream.
The world is waiting to be read.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Getting out there.  Deciding.  Starting the search.
2.  I found my old resumes, my portfolio, my syllabi and course schedules from when I taught community college fifteen years ago.  That old me, the younger one, wasn’t too bad.  If she could do that, I think maybe the newer me, the older one, can manage it, too.
3.  A new pair of shoes.  I’m sort of saying that to try to mitigate the sadness that the old ones finally gave up the ghost this morning.  Really, a pair of sturdy, stylish and comfortable shoes that lasts for ten years–there’s some deeper meaning there.
4.  Opening doors for the Universe to pour in.  (Oooops.  I accidentally typed “pout” there.  Heh.)
5.  That poem by Mary Oliver about death, about being married to amazement.

May we walk in Beauty, in Amazement!

Voyage

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Tonight for my Read-Aloud Poem, I read The Trees by Philip Larkin to my children as they were falling asleep.  You can hear him read it himself here.

The prompt for today’s written poem is to write a voyage poem.

The Six of Swords

The woman in the azure blue scarf
and the horns of the moon on her brow
reached out and turned another card.

And it was the very last card you wanted to see.
And it was the only card you wanted.

This is for your hopes and fears, she said,
For that which you desire may be
also that which you most dread.

* * * *

You hear the voice from your dream:
You will take a voyage by water.
In the prow of the barge, head bowed
by the weight of all that is passing.
The ferryman at work in the stern.
The promised isle before you.

Almost you can feel the breezes
that beckon from across the water,
but the grey mist of the shore behind
still wraps you like a cloak.

Soon you will feel the child stir beside you.
Soon you will raise your head to the sunrise.
Soon will come the moment
when you cross from the tale of what was
to the story of what will be.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Phoebe is back in the hollow; I noticed it first as it sat in the Poetree where my first poems of April are hanging.
2.  Robin singing the sun to birth and singing it to sleep again this evening.  A day bookmarked by robinsong cannot go far awry.
3.  Daffodils are finally blooming!
4.  The shadberry bush that toppled in the ice has sent up quite a number of healthy spars from the twisted stump.  And the buds on the branches from the fallen main trunk are ready to burst into fuzzy bloom, despite the trauma to their main source.
5.  Do-overs.  Starting right back at the beginning of the argument.  Okay, this time I will not be bossy, and you will not be sulky.  Let’s try to figure this out again.  And it works!

May we walk in Beauty!

 

(Conversation at the dinner table tonight:
Whining Child: Why am I being served last?  <Giving a glance at Mom, who will be serving herself last>  Or next to last?
Mom <who rarely pulls out the religion card>: Hmmm.  Do you know what Jesus said about that?
Dad:  Give me more pasta?)

How the World Began

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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!

Rain and Snow and Sleet

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2014 February 085

Gratitude List:
1. For making it safely home tonight in that–Holy Snowsquall, Batman!  What in the world WAS that?  Okay, so this is supposed to be a gratitude, and I am grateful to be home safely, and the words that I want to use for that stuff out there I don’t want my mother to read on my blog.
2. For my five-years-old-today boy who steals my heart every single day, whose journey here was no less perilous than the evening’s icy drive.
3. For the midwife and doulas and friends and sister and Jon and nurses and finally the surgeon who helped get him here safely on that day so long ago, not so long ago.
4. For the rain on my river this morning as we crossed the bridge.  My river, remember, like you are my friends: it’s not about domination and ownership, but about a statement of relationship.  Then what am I to her?  I am her daughter?  Her admirer?  Her acolyte, her friend, her dreamer, her observer, her watcher.
5. Simply for this day.  I will never see it again.  It’s gone now and we have all grown up that much more, and my memory that swears to remember every sweet moment–the tiny voice of a boy counting to thirty in hide-and-seek, the bright eyes, the rich conversations, the singing (oh, the singing)–that memory cannot encompass it all and hold it forever.  So I will swear to hold the Beauty even when my feeble memory lets it trickle into the haze.

May we walk in Beauty!  May you find something, each day, to love and treasure, amid whatever pain and challenge your life hands you.  May a bright yellow flower call your name, may a stranger offer you an open smile, may the breeze kiss your cheek.  Walk in Beauty.

Gulls, Crows and Wild Geese

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Cover 3

 

Gratitude List:
1.  The life and influence of Grace Lefever, herbalist, peace and justice advocate, wise woman, compassionate heart, teacher
2.  Wild chamomile feathering up through the brown grass and dead leaves
3.  Hundreds of wild geese flying over the farm in the mist this morning: “You do not have to be good.”
And crows and gulls flying and calling through the rain above the farm this afternoon: “Be here.  Let your wild self fly free.”
4.  The faerie worlds and magic that my friend Heather sees and offers in her photographs
5.  Rainy day art projects: “Hey Mom, can we do that thing that we do?  Where we draw and then trade?”

May we walk in Beauty!

The Dream Keeper

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This one, by Langston Hughes, keeps wrapping itself around my heart these days, keeps wiggling into my brain-space.

Dream Keeper

Gratitude List:

1.  Collaborative art
2.  A fresh novel to read
3.  Free public libraries–what a concept
4.  Words, spoken and sung (today it was Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote)
5.  Featherbed

May we walk in Beauty!

Because a crow

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

because there was a crow
there was a crow that morning
that morning in the snow
in the snow where the crocus were blooming
where the crocus had cupped their violet bowls
just yesterday around the pollen-padded bees

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Reiki
2.  Reading
3.  Rest
4.  Flow
5.  Belonging

May we walk in Beauty!

Wanton

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For instance, the crocus and anemone
have leaked past the bricks
that line the edge of the bed.

For instance, the wind.

For instance, those people
blew in through the door,
climbed all those flights of stairs,
and sat down to tell me their stories.

For instance, it has taken me
three days to clear my yard of branches.

For instance, this joy
wanders into the house
even when the doors are closed
against the last blast of winter.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Sometimes it seems like you have to get attached to Plan B in order for the tricksy Universe to commit to making Plan A happen.  I am grateful for today’s full schedule (Plan A), and a project to do another day (Plan B).  I don’t mean to disparage the Universe by this–it keeps one on one’s toes, eh?
2.  Crocus and anemone leaking all over the yard.
3.  Hey, that snow was pretty!  No, I never thought I would use those two words in a sentence again, either.  At least not this soon.
4.  Reiki tomorrow
5.  The web of interconnection.  How the cards you draw have messages for me, too.

May we walk in Beauty!

Found Poem

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I found this poem on page 40 of the September 2004 issue of Sojourners Magazine.  In an article by Danny Duncan Collum about Michael Moore’s then-new movie Fahrenheit 911, I circled some words and blacked out the rest.  Here is the result.  It’s a little more disjointed than I want it to be, but it’s really about playing around, seeing what sense I can make out of seeming nonsense, what happens when half-random words and phrases are created and strung together, what meaning is suggested.

DREAM

I saw Che Guevara on a day filled with omens
we went to lunch there, on the big screen
he won’t go back

I am troubling the dead
I won’t tell you this again

that didn’t happen
today he is lucky to be rooted
in this great global anthem

I pulled a few interesting quotations directly out of the article:
“The war is not meant to be won.  It is meant to be continuous.”  George Orwell
“If you let the world change you, you can change the world.”  from The Motorcycle Diaries

Gratitude List:
1.  Hearing the story through the voices of young people and children
2.  Visual Poetry
3.  Songs of journey, songs of water–“Wade in the water, children”
4.  Gentle guides through the liminal spaces
5.  Community support for unpacking uncomfortable, anxious and difficult questions, powerful questions

May we walk in Beauty!

Healing Song and Story

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Gratitude List:
1.  The way that sharing stories opens the heart to healing.
2.  Songs that hold stories.
3.  Vulnerability and strength together.
4.  Clearing the yard of dead branches in the cool evening as the sun set below the rim of the hollow.
5.  Eggs.  For all the potential they hold, all the mystery, the warmth, the way they settle into your palm.  I once had a postcard of an icon of Mary Magdalene holding an egg.

May we walk in Beauty!