feathers

Sentinels

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Who will tell us who we are
when the voices of the trees are silenced?
Who will give us direction
when the sentinels of the forest
can no longer tell us the way?

 

Gratitude List:
1. Trees
2. Sushi–I am still enjoying the memory of Sunday’s lunch
3. Yesterday’s feathers.  I found three yesterday.  One on the ground, another simply resting in mid-air, caught between a spiderweb and a ray of sunshine, and the third a tiny feather floating down from the sycamore tree.  I caught that one before it hit the ground.
4. Easing into the transition
5. Yesterday’s visit from Mindy and Willow.  One of the children went off in a sulk, and when small Willow saw him again, she peered up into his face and said, “Are you better now?”

May we walk in Beauty!

Bats and Feathers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

An extra bonus gratitude today.  Just because.

Gratitude List:
1.  My postcards have begun to arrive!  I joined a postcard poetry project for August, writing a poem a day on a postcard and sending it to some random person on a list.  And I get postcards, too.  Feel like I need to up my game a bit.  I wrote a few early so that people get theirs on or near the beginning of the month.  The ones I received yesterday were so brilliant!  I’ll probably share a few of mine in September.
2.  The feathers.  It happened last year, too–for at least a month, I would find one feather almost every single day.  This week I have begun finding them again, like they’re placed there for me to find.
3.  Summer suppers: corn and homemade bread and tomatoes and peach cobbler and watermelon.
4.  Visiting with friends I haven’t seen for a long time.  Shared memories, new stories, figuring out the world.
5.  Fidelity
6.  Bats flying overhead in the twilight, like a physical representation of the conversation happening on the ground.

May we walk in Beauty!

Five Sacred Elements

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

<Prompt 17: Write an element poem>

I call upon the air,
the breezy inspirations,
the winds that bring ideas,
that cut through the muddle
like a sword of sharp steel.

I call upon the fire,
the passion that ignites,
creative force that excites
the Muse and drives
the enterprise, the energy
that awakens the spirit.

I call upon the water,
deep peace and dream seeking,
realm of the heart, and
keeper of intuitions.
The flow and the flood,
the ocean around us.

I call upon the earth,
the ground of our being,
the rocks and the stones,
the caves, and the bones
of the ancestors.

I call upon center,
great mystery and spirit,
the hub and the wheel,
the home and the fulcrum,
the life-force, the bringer
of balance and union.

Gratitude List:
1.  That lunch.  Wow.  Good friends, never enough time for conversation, food from all over the world.
2.  Lifetime friends.
3.  Good singing
4.  Old Turtle
5.  Feathers.  No, stones.  Both.

May we walk in Beauty.

Word Play

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I love anagrams.  You know, where you take a word, scramble the letters, and come up with another word?  Most of the times, there’s something poetic about the juxtaposition of two words that seem to be unrelated except for the accident of their having the same letters in various combinations.

VILE, EVIL, LIVE–that’s a simple trio, but isn’t there a funny little magic to it?  Why is it so satisfying?  Those first two are similar, and then *poof* you neutralize them with the third.  It’s sort of like a good haiku: Here’s an idea, here’s a similar idea, here’s a little bit of a surprise.

Just a vowel-step away, you have LOVE, VOLE, and that’s just cute.  And you can play a little with that because EVOL is the beginning of evolution, so there’s a whole new way to start a poem. . .

I’ve always been attached to the SANTA, SATAN acronym, because it feels sort of iconoclastic in a naughty schoolchild sort of way.

And I love the little ones that can just be twisted and turned inside out in all sorts of ways, RATS, STAR, ARTS, TARS, for example.

In longer words, I have a particular love of the ones that switch just a letter or two in the middle.  PRENATAL, PARENTAL, PATERNAL.  The first gives way to the other two.  I have slightly uncomfortable associations with the word paternal because it’s so close to paternalistic, but my own pater is a really amazing and wonderful person, so that redeems the word.  What I find really super-satisfying in this one is that prenatal makes use of a prefix, so it significantly reduces the possibility that they’re actually related in some obscure ancient Latin or Indo-European language.  Of course, it switches more letters than the others, so maybe it loses elegance points.

The next set does have some root relationship, but only in their prefix and ending.  CONSERVATION, CONVERSATION.  And we really do need to make sure that we’re having that particular conservation in these days, eh?  I had to pause before I typed that word to make sure I was getting the right one of the two.  Conserve, Converse.  Verse, Serve.  I should probably be less lazy and look up those roots.

I went to an Anti-GMO rally the other day and carried a sign I had made.  It reads: “Label GMOS: Our Food is Sacred.”  At one point during the rally, it hit me that an uncareful reader might think that I think our food is actually frightened of what is being done to it in labs.  Hmm.  SACRED, SCARED.  Are they opposites?  Not really, but they do sort of throw each other into relief.

(This last one feels like it wants to be a whole post itself, or a poem.  It’s what got me settling these words into the computer this morning.  Instead of a piece of inspiration, though, today you get a little glimpse of the classroom part of my brain.)

I wonder if there’s a term for this sort of anagram, the kind that just switches a couple letters in the middle, sort of like an internal Spoonerism.  I’m looking for others for my collection, if you have any to suggest.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Lost is found
2.  Playing with words
3,  Sourdough bread (I have no Off button for sourdough bread, and may end up eating the whole loaf before my family wakes up this morning.)
4.  That marvelous Afghani supper my mom made for us last night.  (Hmmm. Perhaps I’ll stop with the sourdough bread and eat some of that for breakfast instead.)
5.   Feathers

May we walk in Beauty.

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.  Jon Weaver-Kreider–he could be number one on every gratitude list I write.
2.  The purposeful flap of that eagle over the farm and up the ridge yesterday.
3.  Chipotle hot sauce on scrambled eggs.
4.  Winsomeness.  Isn’t that a great word?
5.  Feathers

Namaste.