Palimpsest: Song for a New Year and an Old

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

I have already received a private message from a friend who wrote a marvelous Palimpsest poem.  Feel free to type in your own in the comments or on my FB thread, or in my email or FB messages.  Here’s mine (the phrases on the right-hand side are random quotes pulled out of my Facebook archive):

The fiery sunset of the old year gives way to

salt. . .balsam. . .ratatat cat feet. . .green

a silver gibbous moon gives way to

not sure the sun is ever coming back

this rosy sun shining through a gull’s wing.

too many trinkets in the trees already

This new morning climbs down the northward hill,

a new bubble wand and a madcap two-year-old

washes the fields above the orchard in golden glow,

can’t get enough mulberries

slips downward into the frosty pear trees,

amazing person, that cat

illuminates the weather vane rooster on the roof,

my brain is filled with compost and my poetry is green

and suddenly crests the southern hill.

I think when I was born I was a baby

The puddle of night in the bowl of the hollow

keep talking, keep loving

dissolves into the new year.

Palimpsest

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Good Morning, 2013!  Such a fresh-looking number, that.  I love the movement into a new year, no matter how arbitrary the choice of day may actually be.  As my friend Carol said, Let each day be a new beginning, a chance to begin afresh.  Now, this moment, I am a new person.  And now, in this moment, too, I begin anew.  Always.  There’s that phrase again: Always we begin again.

I went to sleep last night asking for a Word to come to me, a word that would be my focus word for 2013.  What with all the restlessness of a recovering-from-flu six-year-old next to me, and the aches and pains in my own muscles, my sleep was disturbed enough that my dreams haven’t given me clarity on a word.  So I suppose I have to do some actual work on this one.  I think I am going to go with the word I chose for my journal last year.  Perhaps it was unofficially last year’s Word of the Year, but I want to bring in into this year with focus: Palimpsest.

It’s the term for an old manuscript or scroll (usually made of velum) in which the words have been scraped off so that it may be re-written again.  In many cases, remnants of the original documents show through.  I think it was Margaret Atwood who expanded the meaning when she described Canadian cities as palimpsests, new places in which hints and pieces of the older times could be seen.

So Palimpsest is my Word for 2013.  Writing the new chapters of me, I will also read the ways in which the past and memory continue to live in the present, becoming part of the current writing of my life.  Layers upon layers.

I had intended to avoid New Year’s Resolutions this year, but it feels appropriate to me, in conjunction with the word I have chosen, to continue to resolve to scrape away the bits of the story which I no longer need.  So I will continue to resolve, and strengthen my resolve, to de-clutter.  To clean up the spaces in my home and my head which hold the unnecessary bits.  But whatever I miss in my scraping away, instead of resenting, I will look at with wonder at the way it shines a light from the past into the present.

Oh–so Palimpsest will also become today’s poetry prompt.  Anyone care to join me on this one?  I’ll post before I go to bed tonight.

Gratitude List: Last of 2012

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

It’s been a few days.  We’ve been sick.  Still, there has been much to be grateful about.  Tomorrow, I plan to start a new Poem-a-Day process for the month of January.  I’ll have to come up with the prompts mostly on my own, so please don’t hesitate to throw some my way!

1.  A black crow flying above golden corn stubble sprinkled with white snow.
2.  Rosy dawn sun shining through gull wings.
3.  The way Wrightsville nestles into the hillside in the setting sun.
4.  Mom’s chicken corn noodle soup.
5.  Jon’s tireless care of the rest of us, through midnight wakefulness to morning retching.  That’s a good man.

May we walk in Beauty.

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.  Affirmation.  Yes, you can.  Yes, you are.
2.  Watching a thousand crows stream across the sky at dusk through the sunset on my way home from work.  (My apologies to anyone who is upset by the Park City Crows.)  They were absolutely amazing to watch.
3.  Blue eggs
4.  Impending snow
5.  Ruby and Carnelian giddiness

Namaste.

I hope to get back to a more regular poetry rhythm in the new year, as soon as the November chapbook is completely edited and submitted for contest/s.

Gratitude List

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1.  The college gang.  What a great bunch of people!  22 years later, they’re still an incredibly thoughtful and playful and whimsical and compassionate group of people to hang out with.
2.  Memory
3.  Ziggy Marley
4.  That feeling of intense relief when the headache is gone
5.  Red-tailed hawks

Namaste

Gratitude List

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First Day of Kwanzaa: Umoja–Unity

1.  The Scannapieros, strangers who happen to be neighbors who drove the boys and me home this noon when our car started slipping off Ducktown Rd.  Then they went back and looked for Jon.
2.  Jon managed to back down Ducktown and get up to Mt. Pisgah on Cool Creek, getting himself home safely.
3.  Pepita has started to lay: little blue eggs!
4.  Many colors of Sharpies
5.  Deep sleep on dark nights

Namaste

Gratitude List, Christmas 2012

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

1.  More lovely family time, this time with Jon’s family.  I love the way that people care for my children.  We are truly in a village.
2.  Mary Oliver’s poetry
3.  Musings.  Amusement.  The Muses.  Bemused.
4.  Finding a typo in the dictionary.  Nerd, nerd, nerd–why does that feel so satisfying?
5.  Jim Howell’s Lemon Sponge Pie.

Namaste.

Gratitude List Dec. 22

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.  A family that makes holiday get-togethers a total delight (Happy Birthday to my dad!)
2.  Being Santa with Jon Weaver-Kreider
3.  Hot chocolate with a candy cane and a splash of vodka
4.  Annie Lamott’s reminder to take care of myself and not to waste my life wearing pants that are too tight
5.  Circles.  I think I have mentioned them before.  But they mean so many things.  So yes: circles.

Namaste

Gratitude List

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1.  An internet Circle of Wise Women discussing Adrienne Rich, and finding my way back into her work.
2.  French Toast.  Comfort food.
3.  I think I am getting into the spirit.
4.  Long night coming.  Time for sleep.
5.  Circles.
Namaste.

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.  That there are still a hundred shades of green even in the middle of December, and the way the Sun pointed at them for me this afternoon, elegant fingers slotting through the clouds.  See this one here?  And this?
2.  How the chickens skip and bounce out to see me when I go out to the coop.  I am under no illusions.  I know it is because I am the Lunch Lady, but Lunch Lady Love is still good lovin’.
3.  Arugula.  Both the taste and the sound of the word.  I always want to go honk an old-fashioned car horn. . .
4.  More on the Sun, which shone a quick beam through the clouds as I was washing carrots this afternoon.  Orange!  Sweet, glistening orange gems.
5.  Jon Weaver-Kreider, who worked all day, and then cooked dinner when I was too exhausted and wrapped up in kid-mediations to manage.

(I didn’t mention whoopie pies once).
Namaste.