geese

Geese and Crows and Oh-the-Wind!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1. That gypsy wind yesterday, on Brighid’s Day, that scoured the sky, scooped me through the afternoon, tossed geese and crows about like winter leaves.
2. Those crows, those devil-may-care rebels, those renegades, those defiant fliers.  They leapt into the wind, fierce and fearless.
3. Those geese, less jaunty than the crows, more at the mercy of the winds.  Still, they motored on through the gales.  And then one group banked against the grey background of cloud, and they were snow geese, sojourners already returning.  And then there were whole flocks, and some were dark, the Canadas, who live here all year long, and some were the frosty white northerners with their jet black wing tips.  And did I mention it was Brighid’s Day?
4. And on the subject of the wind, there is that new art installation at the new train station in Lancaster with all those twisty bits that whirl in the breeze and stop my heart for just the briefest moment before it goes dancing away with the wind.
5. And then there was that tangerine glow this morning, and two rays of sunlight shooting a magenta X across the low grey cloud, an X that seemed to mark this very moment in time, the quarter point between the cross points of the Solstices and Equinoxes, this Quickening season of Brighid, of the Candle, of the Time-of-the-Small-Animals-Awakening.

Beauty all Around!

Sunlight and Feathers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

There needs to be a word for that moment
when a particular slant of light
hits a golden butterfly wing just so
as it flutters through the hollow.

***

The feathers.  I am still finding at least one a day.  Yesterday there were five.  Two days ago, I found one at school, on the sidewalk between the parking lot and my classroom building.  One day, before I’d left the house, Alicia brought me three she’d found.  As I was pitching my tent at Nancy’s house last weekend, I found a feather.  Right there.  Last year, it lasted about a month or six weeks, a feather a day, beginning in late July.

We construct the meaning of our lives, I think.  I like to keep lots of meanings in my pockets, and take them out to look at, like bright stones.  All these feathers!  It means that I am favored by birds.  Or it’s a message not to fear the fledging, the flight I am about to take.  Or it’s a reminder to rest in the grace of air and light.  Or it means that bird-life in the hollow is healthy and vibrant.  Or it means that there is an owl who chooses my poplar tree for her feasting.  Perhaps it means that something in me is more observant in August, more apt to notice the tiny feathers in my path.  I don’t need to choose one meaning, to sort out the spiritual from the scientific, to hold one above another as the “right” and proper meaning.  I’ll hold them all, let all those pieces weave themselves into the narrative of my life.  Life’s too full of possibilities to narrow it down to one thing.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The August slant of light
2. Tiger swallowtails
3. Wild geese in flight: You do not have to be good.
4. The mysterious promise of another day
5. Baby snuggle time

May we walk in Beauty!

Gulls, Crows and Wild Geese

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Cover 3

 

Gratitude List:
1.  The life and influence of Grace Lefever, herbalist, peace and justice advocate, wise woman, compassionate heart, teacher
2.  Wild chamomile feathering up through the brown grass and dead leaves
3.  Hundreds of wild geese flying over the farm in the mist this morning: “You do not have to be good.”
And crows and gulls flying and calling through the rain above the farm this afternoon: “Be here.  Let your wild self fly free.”
4.  The faerie worlds and magic that my friend Heather sees and offers in her photographs
5.  Rainy day art projects: “Hey Mom, can we do that thing that we do?  Where we draw and then trade?”

May we walk in Beauty!

Elemental

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Fire Cider

Gratitude List:
1.  Birds.  Kestrel on a Wire.  Snow geese in a corn-stubble field.  Bluebirds muttering in the chestnut tree: “There now.  Everything is going to be okay.”
2.  Music.  So much good music yesterday and today.  Indigo Girls’ CD: Nomads, Indians, and Saints–for some reason I came back to it all fresh again yesterday.  Then the Blossom Hill String Band.  This morning’s singing and tears.
3.  Holding it all in the Bowl of the Heart.  It all has to go in there together, and somehow the mix of it all, all the beautiful and difficult and tender and angry and wretched stories, all in there together–somehow it feels right.  That is how it is meant to be.
4.  Spring, She rises.  The footsteps of Persephone are visible now everywhere I turn.
5.  Fire Cider, Elderberry Tincture, and Kombucha.  Good Medicine.

May we walk in Beauty.

Delta of Geese

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Gratitude List:
1.  A delta of snow geese flying above the River last night.
2. The sunset: first a tangerine glow that seemed to shimmer around us, then magenta, and finally crimson.
3. Dandelion tips growing in my brother’s flower beds.  Persephone rises.
4. Teaching myself to go back to sleep.  (Knock on wood)  Not only have I not had midnight insomnia for ages, I have been sleeping until 6:30 lately.
5. Dreams that remind me I’m okay.

May we walk in Beauty.