Take Heart

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Take heart.
Take mine, yours, any heart.
Take heart
and hold it tenderly
in the bowl of your hands,
in the warm breathing space
where your open palms
have held damp soil,
small creatures,
warm eggs fresh from the nest,
where you have cradled
the heads of tiny babies,
cupped water,
offered prayers.
Take heart.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Gentle reiki from Nicki
2.  Charoite with yellow-green calcite inclusions
3.  Learning to say No
4.  (The other) Beth Weaver’s seductive chocolates
5.  The Way Things Work book
Namaste

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

1.  Those people up the road who tenderly removed the siding on the front of their house and just as tenderly restored the log cabin front.
2.  Lisa White’s amazing whoopie pies.  Just like the grandmothers used to make, and yet not so. . .
3.  The way the light rays out of the barn through the boards into the fog.
4.  Breathing.  Breathe in suffering.  Breathe out compassion.  Breathe in gratitude.  Breathe out love.
5.  The light is coming back.  It will return, it will return, it will return.  (I am truly grateful for that, though I realize that this last smacks of desperation as much as it expresses gratitude).

Namaste!

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.  People often really do become their best selves when we expect it of each other.
2.  We get to choose who to be
3.  The struggle is kind of the point
4.  Whoopie Pies–I am drooling in anticipation of the ones I ordered for tomorrow
5.  Resiliency

Namaste.

Look for the Helpers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” — Mister Rogers

Look for the helpers.
I cast a line from me to you.
You cast it outward to those you love.
Fill that web, that basket, that nest, that bowl
with our open wounded hearts,
our prayers, our stones,
our candles, our feathers,
the white hair of our grandmothers.
Something to hold the children,
the mothers, the fathers,
a bowl that will witness and hold the grief.
We will be the helpers.

Up the Hill

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I wanted to try a more traditional form, so here’s a Rondel.  Three stanzas (ABba, abBA, abbaA, where the CAPS are the refrain lines).

When I walked this morning up the hill into the sky
bits of quartzite threw back the laughter of the sun.
A flock of crows flew east to west, one by one.
I breathed the golden air as I watched them fly.

Across the sparkling arm of the sun, they passed me by.
I watched transfix’d.  I watched until they’d gone.
Bits of quartzite threw back the laughter of the sun
when I walked this morning up the hill into the sky.

The sun, a million miles away, a single fixed point, and I
another.  Draw the line between.  See how it runs,
a purposeful and shining thread, artfully spun.
It drew me up and up, toward that golden eye
when I walked this morning up the hill into the sky.

 

And a Gratitude List:
1.  The Pleiades
2.  Bagel sandwiches
3.  Whoopie pies
4.  Pileated Woodpeckers, and the hope of the Ivory Bill
5.  Walking the road together

Namaste

Gratitude List:

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.  Libraries and librarians
2.  The 2-sided coin of science and magic
3.  Pickled radishes
4.  That dream of hundreds of happy children eating around a table
5.  Making it myself

Peace to all beings.

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.  Coconut Flan and Coconut Macaroons in one dessert.
2.  The Great Horned Owl who woke me up this morning.
3.  Poetry as Revolution.  Of the heart.  Of the world.
4.  Mist and fog, and the way they shift and change the landscape.
5.  Rose quartz.
Namaste.

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

1.  Collaborative poetry!
2.  Looking out into the dawn, through wrought-iron curliques to the walnut tree beyond.
3.  That snugglefest with a cuddlesome boy and a purrsome cat.  (Couldn’t type for a while.)
4.  Yesterday afternoon in the kitchen, fixing up the veggies.
5.  The NYT Sunday Crossword.
Namaste.

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.  The sturdy little oak on the corner of Water and James Streets in Lancaster.
2.  Nag champa
3.  Looking for the patterns.  Dendritic agate.
4.  Milk beans and rice.
5.  That interview with Barry Manilow on NPR this morning.  I could hear the wonder creep into his voice when he talked about making music.  After 4 decades.  And he was humble.

Namaste.

I Keep Forgetting

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

It’s early (-ish) morning, my early-riser 3yo is up, the chickens have not been fed, and I am off to work in a couple of hours.  It’s been a few days since I have written a poem.  Maybe I’ll diddle something onto the page, just to keep up the energy of it.  I want to try another glosa soon, but that will take more time than I have at the moment.

These last few days I have been obsessively reading a book written by a dear friend.  She inspires me to not let it all go by without some work at capturing and interpreting it, making it my own, feeling out the meaning. 

If I have learned anything through the process of writing a poem-a-day last month, it is that often the moments when I think I am just tossing off a little bit of nothing into the air, often those moments are the ones when some little bit of magic happens.  Perhaps not the glossy, well-formed show-dog things, but I’m a fan of the open heart of the mutt myself.  (Though I am eager to train up a few of these little mutts from the past month and see how well they do in the ring.)

I feel a little lost without an external poetry prompt. . .

I keep forgetting to mention how your smile made my heart dance
on that grey day last winter
I keep forgetting to tell you how, when you said curtain,
I felt scales fall from my eyes
I keep forgetting my name
I keep forgetting the steps of the dance you showed me
I keep forgetting the words to that song
I keep forgetting whether or not I have already written this poem,
it has been so many days in my heart