Pennsylvania

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
Waiting for the tornado warning to pass, fooling around in the basement stairwell. The boys thought the shine through my glasses gave me laser eye.

The Prompt today is to title a poem the name of a state or territory or province. I’m not sure how much I have to say about my state.

Pennsylvania

I think of quartzite. Lots of it.
Winking in the sun as if it has a message
to send in Morse code. And limestone,
the bubbled rock, prone to give way
in sudden sinkholes. And schist and mica
and the nuggets of limonite, compelling in their squareness.
South of here, the serpentine,
a stone that holds within itself
maps of Earth’s geologic history.

The woods are no longer Penn’s,
and really, they weren’t his to divide in the first place,
cutting and marking the places
where Manifest Destiny would make spaces
for colonists to conquer. Even my gentle Mennonites
were not blameless.

On this side of the Alleghenies,
everything runs to the Susquehanna,
and thence to the Bay, and then to the ocean.
Cabin creek begins as a spring somewhere
above us on the ridge, and flows right to the river.

(I can’t figure out where this is going, and I need to go to bed. So it’s a fragment tonight.)

The View From Here

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Today’s Poetic Asides Prompt is to write a View Poem. As is so often the case, I have come to the end of the day tired and foggy.

The View from Here

Down the hill on Ducktown Road through the woods, the open view
begins with a plush Persian rug of purple dead nettle and chickweed,
glowing with the life force of spring, and dotted with golden dandelions.

Beyond, the peach tree blossoms are begin to open on the branches
like pink popcorn, a few more each time we pass,
and the ridge, darker behind the farms of our little valley,
even that winter brown is is tufted with green and shining red.

It’s a cloud-watching day, with a Maryblue sky,
and I think that if I could travel anywhere in the world
to find a beautiful landscape, I might just come right here.

The Art of Dreaming

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Poeming today on The Art of __(BLANK)__.

The Art of Dreaming

You need to brood, to hold the day-world deep,
to creep through hallways and tunnels
in buildings you half remember.
Keep things in their rooms, hidden in hollows,
behind oaken doors and up stairways,
through arches and curtains,
where they become something else,
symbols of themselves, monsters and midwives.

You must step into the stream of the story,
find peace in the threads of the tale
that the smallest elf of your deepest self
is telling you, sifting and shifting images,
sliding pictures through your vision
like an old-time stereoscope.

Do not try to remember. Look sideways,
like you do at the Pleiades, which you can only see
when you look beside them, and never directly.
The memory of dreams requires just such a two-step,
a soft and sideways focus, peripheral.
Write them down. Don’t force sense upon them,
but let them unravel onto the page.

Thorn in My Side

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Today’s Poetic Asides Prompt is to write a poem that is a dedication, or a poem with a dedication.

Thorn in My Side
to my Gadfly

Here’s the thing:
The outrage dissipates so much more quickly now.
There’s the kick in the gut when I see your name
there on the email, and I think, “Here we go again,”
and then a moment of panic, another of anger,
and then, this time. . .

I sat there just watching what was happening
inside my head, expecting the roaring in the ears,
the tunneling of vision, the white light blinking
in the back of my brain. And there was nothing, really.
And then, what I didn’t expect: gratitude.
Quiet, twinkling gratitude, and steady purpose.

That shocked me. I’m so used to the exhausting fury,
the worry and self-righteous indignation.
But this time I may have begun to pass the test,
to rest a moment in my breathing, then focus on my center,
to enter–finally–a space where I can see myself,
and you, and shift the focus of the attack.

The thing is:
You have been a better teacher
than you could ever imagine,
and likely more than you intend,
and I have been a less than willing student,
too eager to defend my ego
in the face of your attacks.

You’ve taught me to be curious
about the fury that you send my way,
to stay within my heart-space,
even to offer grace in the midst of your rage.
I have found safety that you cannot touch,
your cages will catch me no longer.
I’m stronger now, and I can hold the net
you toss my way, and turn it
to a golden thread.

Poplar and Sycamore

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Today’s Poetic Asides Prompt is to write a lone poem.

Some trees develop friendships, they say,
filling out their branches on the outer edges,
criss-crossing the air between them
with a fine hatch of lighter branches,
creating two halves of a single crown.

When they took down the old poplar,
seventy years old and ninety feet tall,
and rot-wood spreading from its heart,
half the sky in the hollow was revealed,
its other half still obscured by sycamore,
now lone and lopsided, missing half a crown.

Beneath the drive, buckled now by poplar’s knees,
are their roots still entwined?

Gratitude List:
1. Green grass, blue sky, puffy white clouds, and pink trees.
2. The children playing outside together
3. Serendipity and synchronicity
4. Traffic was a breeze this afternoon. (I know this one seems petty, but it’s a really big deal to me. On a good day, I can get to school in 25-30 minutes. The ride home can top 45.)
5. The water is back on. We have not had water since Friday when the pump failed. The plumber is now my hero, and I told him so.

May we walk in Beauty!

Caretakers in the Garden of the Beloved

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The prompt for today is two-fold: Write a love/anti-love poem.

You have heard it said,
though no holy book has said it,
“You shall love the sinner,
and you shall hate the sin,”
which some have interpreted to mean
that they shall cast away
all whose love does not resemble their own.
They have given themselves license
to harass, to bully, and to goad.

But I say unto you:
The world has had too much of hatred.
You shall turn your eyes
from the subject of sinning.
You shall love whom the Beloved loves.
You shall seek after love,
watch for love as a gardener
watches for tender shoots,
and nurtures them,
and breathes upon them.

You have no time for anything
abstract as hatred.
You shall be the Caretakers of love,
the Beloved’s own gardeners,
tending love wherever you see it,
in whatever form it takes,
nurturing bud to blossom.

Outer Space, Inner Space

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Today’s Prompt on Poetic Asides is to write a Lucky Number poem. My thirteen lines have thirteen syllables each. I might call the form thirteen squared.

Thirteen white pebbles in a woven nettle basket.
Thirteen striped feathers floating on the gentle spring breeze.
Thirteen tiny minnows circling in a shallow creek.

You’ve drawn the Death card, which is also Transformation.
One cycle is ending; another is beginning.

Ouroboros, Jormundgand, and Damballa Wedo:
Whatever you call it, the World Serpent eats its tail,
delineating a universe, shaping a world,
separating the outer space from the inner space.

Don’t take no as your final answer. Don’t give up now.
The hardest push comes just before the moment of birth.
The final moment of surrender to the process
is the moment that the light of the new world shines in.

Loving What Is Mine

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
The little conch shell dreams of the ocean.

Today’s Poetic Asides prompt is to write a poem on the subject of jealousy. I don’t know that I experience that particular emotion much. Perhaps I am not being honest with myself?

Though I would love to defy gravity with the grace
of an acrobat or ballerina, how can I be jealous?
For jealousy fogs the windows of appreciation,
and pulls my soul’s feet downward just as surely
as my physical body rests solidly on earth,
and I want to let my spirit fly with those who can.

And how can I be jealous of the artist whose line
is so eloquent that a single curve or bend
can draw me to tears? I long to place my truths
within the webs of line and color as great artists do,
but jealousy would push me off the ladder
I am climbing toward them in their lofty realms.

Sometimes I read a line of perfect thought
in poetry or prose and think, “I wish I’d written that!”
But even that distracts me from the beauty of the word,
and pulls me out of that co-creative space wherein
the writer tosses out a thread of meaning
and the reader reels it in, and both are necessary
for the literary process to be complete.

Oh, I get jealous of other people’s tidy spaces,
their immaculate houses that never break down,
their ability to get everything done in timely ways.
But would I trade my life for theirs? Would I then
be satisfied? Or would I ride out of that upgrade
into the next, never learning to be content?

May I always remain unsettled enough
that I continue seeking better ways,
but may my days be filled not with wishing
for another train, but with loving what is mine,
and treasuring the marvelous gifts that others
have and know and do.

After All

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Today’s prompt on Poetic Asides is to write a Poem titled, “After ______.”

After All
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

After all is said and done,
when you’ve won the battle,
when you catch your breath
and stretch your fingers to the sun,

will you still believe in all the words
and songs that led you to your path?
Will you remember all the guides
who walked beside you in the lonesome days?

Will you praise the small coincidences
of the wayside trees that brought you comfort,
and the sort of incidental shining stones
that made a trail for you to follow?

After the dust has settled,
after the room has stopped spinning,
after the dice have rolled the magic number,
will you stumble onward blindly

in the noonday glare, or will you pause
and rest a moment, give a knowing glance
toward the river and the willows, the pebbles
and the flaming trees of spring?

Will you sing a grateful poem to the day?
Will you kneel? Will you build an altar?
Will you dance? Will you pray?

Gratitude List:
1. Phoebe calling
2. Bluebird muttering
3. Fixing things
4. Water
5. Poeming

May we walk in Beauty!

I Stole This Poem

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
I drew this back at the end of February, when I finally began to feel that awful weight of winter shifting just the lightest bit.

Today’s prompt on Poetic Asides is to write a stolen poem. Here’s my attempt:

Poetry Prompt: Write a Stolen Poem

I stole this poem years ago, actually,
from a shelf in a corner of that old book shop
on a quiet street down by the river.
Dust motes twinkled in shafts of sun
which slanted through the windows.

I eased the leather-clad book from a high shelf.
I thought I heard it whispering.
My fingers tingled with its electric pull.

I knew it would contain treasures:
words like glisten and linger,
like numinous, mellow, meringue.
I thought it might glow on the page,
hum my name, offer me words to ponder:
tendril, exquisite, winsome, wander.
And words strong and feral,
like flame, wild, and bramble,
courageous, incarnate, sycamore.

I thought it might tell me how not to be afraid,
how to not put so much stake in other people’s opinions,
how not to trust the lure of the the easiest road.

It did not disappoint.
I’ve kept it, concealed,
waiting for the moment,
the right invitation,
to reveal it.