dream

Not What it Seems

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a things-not-as-they-appear poem.  I keep going back to the Shaman Poem from March 1:

Here is how we make the world:
I will say fire and mean wisdom.
I will say wisteria and mean my thoughts are tangled.
I will say the river is flowing and mean that time is passing.
I will say grandmother’s quilt and mean that the work is love.

I will say house and mean your heart.
I will say spiderweb and mean the prayers are holding you.
I will say the eagle flies and mean my thoughts are with you.
I will say the daffodils are blooming and mean you are healing.

I will say song and mean dream.
I will say dream and mean prayer.
I will say prayer and mean poem.

 

Gratitude List:
1. My neighbor’s bank of nodding sunny daffodils.  (Say Man-who-Plants-Sunshine, and no longer mean Crusty Curmudgeon.  That one is going to take some work.)
2. Freckles on a small boy’s face.
3. A day to organize and tidy the classroom.
4. Playing outside!
5. All the poems of April.  I decided I did not have time curate a Poetree this year.  Still, the Internet is a grand Tree of Poetry.  I am loving reading everyone’s poems.

May we walk in Beauty!

Wings

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I dreamed I had wings,
black feathers rising behind me like shadow.
When I opened my eyes,
the lonely earth spread out beneath me;
the old moon was at my back.

Gratitude List:
1. Crows crossing the moon in the morning
2. Mist rising from the Millstream in the afternoon
3. Options
4. Shadows
5. Three Good Things.  I have been carrying some heaviness lately–by my own choice, and with gratitude and great love.  So it was nice in the space of this day to have Three Good Things come my way: a student stopped by to tell me that her father, who had been injured fighting a fire a year ago, is back on the job; another student, adopted as a baby from Russia, stopped by to tell me that he finally received his official citizenship; this evening at the library, I ran into a friend I haven’t seen in a long time.

May we walk in Beauty!

Say Dream and Mean Poem

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2014 March 016

To celebrate the dawning of March, here is a photo from last March.  I don’t think the aconite are up just yet, but I will check this morning on the way out to the car.

Two nights ago, I dreamed that Lady Gaga and her beau were touring the school one afternoon and stopped by my room.  The Lady was enthralled by the look of the room, and told me that it must mean I was an excellent teacher.  Look at me, fishing for compliments even in my dreams.  I know where this one came from, of course.  I had been pondering, as I fell asleep, how fascinating it is that all these sober and earnest Lancaster County Mennonites (I include myself in those descriptors) are suddenly three degrees of separation away from Lady Gaga: We know people who taught Taylor Kinney, who is soon to be Mr. Gaga.  Does that make him Lord Gaga, perhaps?

This morning, I woke up in the middle of an etymological dream about the root jour, which my sleeping brain reminded me means day.  I know that journal means the record of the day, so journey, I woke up thinking, must mean the day’s travel.  Sojourn–how does that differ from journey?  I looked it up a moment ago.  The first part of  sojourn comes from sub-, which means “less than,” so sojourn originally intended to indicate a short stay, whereas journey was about the travel from place to place.  I am so glad that my dreaming mind had me clear up all that information.  Perhaps I need to plan a journey, a sojourn.

This morning’s writing exercise is the Language Event I wrote about yesterday.  I am going to try to do it as a free-write–as fast as I can–and see whether any treasures fall out of my foggy brain.

Say journey and mean day
Say blue and mean that you were out in the morning
Say wildness and mean longing
Say twilight and mean the way your soul whispers
Say birdsong and mean message
Say warning and mean that you need to move on
Say season and mean that you have become someone new
Say winter and mean that an old thing is passing
Say springtime and mean that the morning is dawning
Say morning sun and mean that you open your eyes
Say green and mean that you are nourished and fed
Say golden and mean that butterflies are returning

This has some possibility.  I feel like I might want to keep a notebook and write ten of them a day, and then compile a Shaman’s Lexicon Poem, perhaps.  If you want to do it, too, feel free.  Perhaps our poems will meet some day in the ethers of the internet.  I think I will add it to my list of poetry-writing exercises for the ninth-grade poetry unit.

Gratitude List:
1. Grandma Weaver’s afghan and old plum-colored recliner.  Nothing says comfort to me quite like sitting here like this.  Come to think of it, the white and blue quilt that is folded over the back of the chair right now was made by Grandma Slabaugh.  (Say grandmother’s blanket and mean enwrapped by love.)
2. A clean house.  (Say clean house and mean quiet mind.)
3. This sea-foam-colored scarf.  (Say aquamarine and mean contemplation.)
4. Playing violin with Ellis on the cello yesterday afternoon with the winter sun sparkling through the windows. (Say music and mean my heart is dancing.)
5. The shenanigans of a silly five-year-old. (Say shenanigans and mean shenanigans.)

May we walk in Beauty!

What Will You Risk?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In last night’s dream
we were racing down the road
in a jaunty little car.
(Aren’t all dream-cars sort of jaunty?)

“Holy —-!”
I’m afraid I screamed
what you think I did
as we skimmed the edge
of the giant sinkhole.

“Did you see that sinkhole?
It almost swallowed us up!”
My oblivious car-mates
(Me, Me, and Me,
according to Joseph Campbell)
were not paying attention,
and Oblivious Driver Me
sped up to crest a hill
which was covered with debris.

We didn’t make it over the pile of junk
and had to back up,
had to go another way.

“Oh, well,” said Driver Me to Disapproving Me,
“at least we tried.”

In my head as I woke up,
a familiar voice was singing,
“What will you risk?”

Waiting for the Dreams

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Each year, during the long nights between Winter Solstice and Epiphany, I carefully watch the dreams and pictures that appear to me, gleaning ideas and images that might be helpful to me in the coming year.  This year I am impatient.  I have been cataloging my list for the past two weeks and I want to solidify it and crystallize it.  But it’s also delightful to anticipate what these last few nights might show, so I will wait, and perhaps nudge some of my list into a poem:

While I wait for the dreams to be complete
while I sit at the feet of winter
listening

waiting for the little bell to ring
for the sound of rushing wings
for the things born in darkness
to take form
to rise up–

while a vulture flies across my window
red root and plantain nourish and heal me
a lynx crouches by a granite outcrop in the meadow
the storyteller raises her voice in a chant of longing
and a silent girl turns the corner ahead of me

I sit down to work
and sleep overtakes me:
One more vision for the road
One more message for the journey

In the Dream Labyrinth

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

My sister says that there is a building somewhere in Virginia which was designed to confuse the sense of direction, to force people to stop each other in the halls to ask, “Do you know the way to Conference Room C? Or even how to get to the third floor from here?”

The labyrinth of halls and underground passages and stairs and places that seem to go nowhere is designed to force the wandering souls to interact, to find their way together.  I find the idea intriguing, and something in my waking self steps forward with excitement at the challenge, at the genius of creating a space which intentionally unmoors people in order to force them to depend on each other.

But on the other hand, this is the landscape of my most deeply frustrating dreams.  I am always wandering down hallways, running up flights of stairs, only to find that I’ve arrived at the wrong end of the building, my appointment was set for an hour ago, I’m late for class, and I haven’t studied for the test.  The year is nearly over and I forgot to go to class all year, and if I could just find my way through the halls to the office, I could set everything straight.

Perhaps those dreams lie at the heart of my own anxieties, social and otherwise.  There’s a structure there that everyone else seems to get, to understand.  I seem to be the only one in the dreams (and sometimes in life) who can’t find my way, who can’t figure out how it’s supposed to be laid out, who has forgotten where to go and even why I was there in the first place.

Next time I find myself lost in the labyrinth of an institution in my dreams, perhaps I’ll stop and ask someone for help, see if I can inject a new way of interacting with the space of the dream.  Perhaps that will in turn inform something in my waking life, give me a new perspective on my own ability to wake up more fully to my own story.

Gratitude List:
1.  Simple Musings, a new booklet written by a whole group of friends–reflections on the season of Lent
2.  Snow Geese: a large flock (hundreds?) circling a corn field north of Columbia
3.  This image: Just a few fields down from the geese sits a farm that is bisected by an old railroad siding.  The siding is raised on a little bank to keep it level, and a fringe of trees grows along it and in front of a farmhouse.  This afternoon an old long-horned bull was standing on the siding as we passed.
4.  Storm downgrade
5.  Benediction, blessing.

May we walk in Beauty!

Waking Up

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Like the remnants of fog burning away in the morning sun
the last rags of dream whisper through the valleys
of my waking brain, gnats caught in the cobwebs of consciousness.

In the beginning of the year, the drops of mist form words
and a sentence emerges like a sapling from the fog:
All that I have been is compounded in the present moment.

One morning I wake and the spiders whisper the name
of an impossibly green stone, like poison, like miracles:
Dioptase, a viridian eye that sends forth the tentacles of the heart.

Or a song will be ringing in my ears as I tiptoe downstairs
in the dawn: Give yourself to love, if love is what you’re after.
Open up your heart to the tears and the laughter.

I gather the strands of silk and wool and hope that have caught
on the fences between the world of waking and sleeping,
and weave them into the story of the day, the week, the year.

There was this one: I am walking down a sunny city street
and am filled suddenly with foreboding, knowledge of a Terrible Presence.
I know that it will destroy me, and the world, if it senses my recognition.

The key, I learned without learning,
is to keep that knowledge hidden in the back of my brain
and cover it up with gratitude and joy and hope.

(Already I know that I will be revising this poem, to make it less self-referential, less plodding.  But I wanted to get it down today, and this is the place where I do this work.  Welcome to my process.)

Gratitude List:
1.  Towhee is back.  Ellis misidentified him as the orchard oriole.  If you know the two birds or have a bird book handy, you’ll understand why that makes me proud.  He’s getting his birder’s eyes on.
2.  Weighing cheese for the farm store with Ellis.  Impromptu math lesson on rounding up and down to the nickel.
3.  Chocolate cake/brownie goodness.  We have discovered the Grand Unifying Theory.  This is the basis of everything.  I love the Saturday crew.
4.  Phoebe babies in the barn.  It reminded me of the lovely book which my Great Aunt Lizzie gave to us when we were children.  I will read it to my own children again this coming week as we wait for the little ones to fledge.
5.  Ellis making the point that one of the things that is important to him is taking care of the very smallest ones.
(Hmmm.  A lot of Ellis in this list.  He’s a special kid, and so is his brother.)

May we walk in Beauty!

Mistakes and Hope

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1.  I didn’t hit that button to send my final proof off to the printing process before I noticed a major omission.  Whew.  (“Where’d they put the page numbers?  Oh right.  They is me.  Forgot ’em.”)
2.  The tides may be turning in favor of small and local and real and authentic.
3.  Kindness.
4.  New ideas.
5.  Dreaming.

May we walk in beauty.

For Glee

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

The list poem for a March Monday.  It will suffice for my gratitude list for today:

For glee
for giggle
for grin
for glow
for making snowmen in the snow

For dare
for desire
for delight
for dream
for things not always as they seem

For hilarity
for hope
for honor
for heart
for touch, and healing, and grace, and art

For breath
for blanket
for blessings
for birds
for building stories with our words

 

This is Ellis in 2009.  Today’s snowman is much smaller than this one, and today’s brother looks exactly like the boy in this picture.
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March Monday: The Way of Trees

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I was hoping that by giving myself a few days I would have something more polished to put up here, but this one feels like it needs a lot more work.  But the Mockingbird says to put it out there anyway. 

A teenaged boy drives his loud car
through the hollow at midnight
on his way from anger to angst.
Ribbons of red sparks catch
on the thorns of the locust trees.

Golden flowers of a woman’s hope
settle into the branches
of the towering sycamore
as she sits in its shade
and speaks her story.

The poplar, too, and the walnuts,
grasp the thoughts and dreams
of people passing through,
the green streamers of a new love,
the fierce orange flames of betrayal.

At night, the trees feed our dreams
with the colors they have harvested.
In the hollow, we dream with the trees,
our sleeping stories tangled
with the strands the trees have gathered.

 

March 3 Gratitude List:

1. Sunlight sparkling through whirling snow.
2. The way shadows hold the shapes of things. the way the snow stayed in the shadow of the poplar tree on the roof while all the rest melted away in the sun.
3. The quest and the questions. Yearning for the Ineffable Mystery.
4. Sea-tumbled, egg-shaped granite.
5. Stories. Love stories, family stories, personal stories.
May we walk in beauty.