gratitude

Conversations

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

The Things I Forgot to Tell Mara on the Phone Yesterday
and Some Things I told Marie in Email. . .

“and see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,”
–Jane Hirshfield

I was such a pleasure to take a little walk
inside your head with you
while this was sprouting,
these ferns uncoiling their sacred spirals
into the dappled light of the woods.

I forgot to ask you about the plural of tanka.
I think I will say tankas,
though to conjugate the Japanese in Latin,
to write many tanki,
would delight my soul.

I forgot to tell you how Ellis says
he knows the language of birds,
that the goldfinch told him
from the branches of the Poet-Tree
that it likes my poems.

I wanted to tell you about the Valley where I was going,
the place where my ancestors first lived in this country,
the way I feel as I am driving toward that place,
like a magnet draws me onward.
How I have decided not to put
the Weaverland Cemetery poem
into my collection.  How the demons in it have been exorcised.

I forgot to tell you that I am writing a new book,
forgot to ask how yours is progressing.

I love the streams where consciousness flows,
says my friend Bev.  I wanted to tell you
how I am learning to follow that stream,
especially this month, how I want to break words open
and see how they work from the inside,
the way Leigh does, and you do.

My sister quotes an expert in her book:
Take everything here as intended.
This is not fiction;
still, it is intended.

You will notice that I left out the but in that last sentence.
I suppose that still is a cop-out, but
I’ll keep it there and move along.

There is a scar on my belly
where my children were born into the world.
I have worked so hard on myself about that scar,
mostly remembering that it is a new opening,
a sacred space opened up for new life to enter the world.
When I don’t catch myself,
I find myself thinking of it as a reminder of my failure,
questioning, always questioning whether I tried hard enough
to bring my children to birth in the natural way.
Next time I start to fall into that chasm,
I will think of my proud flesh.

I have not worded the journey
in quite this way before.

Now that it comes down to it,
most of what I am telling you now
is things I have thought about today,
remembering the sound of your voice,
the delicate silences in your phrasing,
the poetry you weave in the music of your voice.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Oh, William Stafford:  “I place my feet with care in such a world.”
2.  Elderberry syrup and brandy.  I will not catch that cold.  I will not catch that cold.  And I will be very happy while I am not doing it.
3.  One step closer.  The day was filled with the magic of stepping closer to becoming.
4.  The dream of Grandma’s house.  For years, it was my most commonly recurring dream theme.  After the house was torn down in 2005, I stopped dreaming about it.  Yesterday, we drove through Blue Ball to the Weaverland Valley, past the garage that is now where her grand old Victorian house used to stand.  We visited her grave, and the graves of my uncles.  When we got home, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion, like something was calling me into sleep, and when I slept I walked through her house again, as always discovering rooms that I had never known were there.  This time I found things I had written years ago, found pieces of myownself that I had forgotten.
5.  Julia Butterfly Hill.

May we walk in beauty.

The Trees Are Blooming

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1.  Hello Dogwoods.  Hello Willows.  Greetings to the Impossibly Pink Thing whose name I do not know.  Hello Cherry, and tiny green leaves on the Gingko.
2.  Weaving stories and poems with people.
3.  Meeting someone in person whom I have only known on Facebook.  It’s so exciting to meet someone you already know and care about.  What a brave new world we live in!
4.  Reading poetry with Ellis.  He is getting ready for Poem-in-your-pocket day next week.  I read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 to him and choked on my tears on the last two lines.  So beautiful.  Ellis ended up writing his own poem.
5.  The way the round green hill of Sam Lewis Park rises to meet a bright blue sky dusted with white clouds.  Satisfying.

May we walk in beauty.

On Wee Horses and Caramel Custard

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Gratitude List:
1.  Those little foals up by Holly Springs on Mt. Pisgah.  How they dance across the fields, all spidery legs and joints.  How, when they turn and dash away up the hill, they are so skinny they almost disappear between the rays of sunlight.
2.  Caramel custard like Mom used to make.  I had to make some after play group this morning.  Yvonne brought caramel custard.  I was on my second (small) helping when someone laughed and asked me if I was really eating that dip by the spoonful.  Tasted like custard to me.  Nice and coconutty, too.
3.  Being a grown up.  Working on being a grown up.
4.  Okay, I have to talk about the Mockingbird again.  Because yesterday I caught him doing a hermit thrush, and then a vireo.  If he was trying to show off, he certainly impressed me.  What a birdie!
5.  This story about how poetry and art saved a forest.  About Poet-Trees.  And learning about Han Shan, who wrote poetry on trees and rocks.

May we walk in Beauty!

Please Don’t Read This Poem If Your Heart Is Feeling Tender

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 6 Comments

Gratitide List:
(first, in case you want to stop before reading the poem)
1.  Breathing in compassion.  Breathing out compassion.
2.  The helpers.
3.  A compliment: I will be the opposite of Cynicism
4.  The red open mouths of the tulips
5.  Getting to decide who I want to be.

I need a labyrinth today for going into the darkness,
and remembering to come back out.2011 June 227

I do not want to write this poem.
I need to write this poem.
That boy who died in the blast,
that one with large wide eyes like my sons,
I killed him.  Well, not him, exactly.
But that other one, the one
who happened to be where a Taliban terrorist
happened–oops–to not be
that day when the apricots were blooming
on the hillsides of Pakistan.
He was watching for his father to finish a race,
for his father to come in from planting his fields,
for his father to return from the next village.

I am so tired of all my murdering.  So tired of killing.
I am tired of this poem already, and I am only beginning.
Some days I see the blood everywhere:
on my hands, on my pillow, in the fields
where the spring onions are growing.

I pay my taxes, don’t you see?
That’s the whole story.

I have murdered my own children.
Well, not my sons exactly.
But sons.  I have killed so many.
And mothers.  So many.

Just like Mr. Obama has murdered his daughters.
He sent bombs from the sky
to kill them, to maim.
Well, not his own daughters exactly.
But daughters.  So many daughters.
And fathers.

Please stop me.
I don’t want not to write this poem.
I am so weary of killing,
of writing this poem, I mean.

I keep doing it, keep killing.
Keep sending my finches and bluebirds,
my tender little toad,
keep sending my taxes.
To kill people, children,
in faraway places.  My children.
Eyes so large, they want to take in the whole world.
“No more hurting people,” they all say.

I pay my taxes, don’t you see?
I need to stop writing this poem.
I am so weary of it, so very weary.

Yes, I know it was I.
I was the one who plotted and schemed,
who planted those bombs
like I plant my tomatoes.
Well, not those bombs exactly,
not those very bombs.
But bombs.  The ones raining death
from the blue sky to the hills
where the apricots are blooming,
raining down killing on children.

My own children.
Not my own.  Not mine.
But my children.

Please.  I need to stop writing this poem.

Look for the Helpers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Re-posting a poem I wrote on a dark day back in December.

“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 fine 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.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Breathing in.  Breathing out.
2.  The way people help.  Almost blindly.  Just running into the fray.  Goodness that goes beyond sense of personal preservation.
3.  The wonderful people who help us on Goldfinch Farm.  We have such a great crew.
4.  Great customers, new and old.  I feel so heartened.
5.  Mowing the grass.  I love to get out on that old riding mower and mow the grass.

May we walk in beauty.

2013 April 059
Mockingbird in Maple this afternoon.

Numinous

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I am really liking the word numinous.  Jon gave it to me to chew on the other day.  He will occasionally do that.  “Do you know what numinous means?”  And I’ll do my best to describe what I think it means, and then he’ll read me the dictionary definition.  And he doesn’t do it to trick or trap me–he looks up words that capture his attention, and then shares them.  He also gave me noetic the other day.  I like them both, numinous like luminous, and not dissimilar in meaning either.  Luminous, but more so.  And noetic like poetic, and also not dissimilar, but more scholarly, perhaps; the poetry of intellect.

2013 April 032

 

Gratitude List:
1.  This day, 26 years ago.  Pizza, pool, and a penny for good luck.  I decided that it was time to tell that cute shy boy how much I liked him.  Turns out, he liked me too.  He’s still cute, and sort of shy, and I like him a whole, whole lot.
2.  Flinchbaugh’s Orchard, you are so beautiful!  People, if you live near Ducktown Rd., you owe it to your soul to go sigh at their trees.   Springtime, you may be one tough goddess in your big old mud boots, but I can see your frilly pink petticoats.
3.  Rain.  The fields need it and it’s really beautiful and it makes me feel like I am in Scotland and it brings out the intensity of the colors of spring.  I can repair the Poet-Tree tomorrow.
4.  So many lessons to learn.  This may be turning a challenge into a gratitude.  I think I will never be an expert in matters of heart and friendship and interacting with people.  Sometimes I feel so awkward about who to be, how to be.  But that means there is always something to learn, always a new path to explore.  And for that I really am grateful.  Trying to be, yes.  And am.
5.  Good well-child checks today.
May we walk in beauty.

Ready for My Big Girl Boots

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’m gonna be bustin’ out all over, see,
and breaking the rules,
like Spring did when she came
stomping up over the hillside
in her kick-ass boots.
Spring, she’s all bluster and whoosh.

Did you see how she stood,
one foot on each rim of the ridge,
cocked her elbows akimbo,
flounced her frilly pink petticoat
and hooted and hollered
all over the hollow?

Because I want that kind of magic,
that fearlessness and fiercesomeness,
that wild-hearted yodel and galumph.
And a pair of those big girl boots.

Spring, she nodded and winked
at the wide-eyed rooster
on the weather vane.
“Tag!  You’re it!”
Then she skipped off to the River,
over the folding foothills of Mt. Pisgah,
spreading a carpet of green behind her.

(edited 3-17-14)

2013 April 027

Gratitude List:
1.   Sitting by the creek near this tree with a good novel (The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield) and watching my boy engineer dams and pools in the creek, catch crawcrabs.  He’s so sparkly.  Better than a nap, any day.
2.  Play group!  Watching the children grow.  That amazing homemade nutella.
3.  Freckled nose
4.  Making stuff
5.  Wind.  For clearing.  For inspiring.  For bringing a new thing.  For the gypsy ache to move and shift.  For music in the woods.  For words that blow through the woods.
May we walk in Beauty.

More from the Queen of Swords

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

I’m just a seer, not a sibyl.
Thing is, no one seems to get the difference.
Expecting me to know the future,
to sniff the wind like a wolf
and Know.  Like that.
What’s coming up the pike.
How the caribou are moving in the valley.
Whether someone is about to leave the room.

I’m really always the last one to know.
Call it the handicap of my profession.
So much lies outside my sensing.
Perhaps I am the wolf indeed,
smelling the rabbit in the underbrush
but missing the smell of fire
when the wind blows the other way.

The little breezes that blow
this way and that
and swirl around the valley,
they only serve to tickle my nose,
to confuse my brain.
I need a strong and steady wind
from one direction to get my bearings.

It doesn’t make me a liar
and it doesn’t make you a fraud.
But now I see what you meant
about the lonely tundra.

2013 April 025

Gratitude List:
1.  Forsythia:  Last summer the township butchered our poor neglected forsythia that they deemed to be growing too close to the road.  She took those wounded arms, laid them out on the ground, and dug her fingers into the soil.  So many little bushes growing from her wounds!
2.  More birdsong:  Screech Owl in the afternoon, and cuckoo, and woodpecker.  More more more mockingbird.
3.  Breaking the rules.  This is about poetry and then maybe it’s not.  Perhaps it’s about springtime and the poem I am going to write soon about her big boots.
4.  Fatboy Slim and Praise.  And love poetry, sensual and praiseful.
5.  The sun.  Did I say the sun?  Yesterday I said Vitamin D which means the sun and means that something is blooming inside me.  And oops, I mentioned spring in #3 already, but there it is again.  And did I say that I would be starting to break the rules?
May we walk through poems.

Everyone is Coming Home

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This morning when I went out into the balmy sunrise to feed the chickens, I thought a strange wren was singing in the walnut tree.  He had such an odd accent.  But suddenly instead of wren, cardinal was calling, then robin was clucking out a scold, then jay announced, “News!  News!”  And there, at the very top branch of the walnut, was my old friend Mockingbird, giving me the run-down of all the folks he’d met on his wintertime journeys.  He seems to have expanded his repertoire of languages.  Welcome back, Polyglot.

And the swallows and the phoebe were back last week, along with the pileated woodpecker.  I put nectar in the oriole feeder today in case that friend arrives in the next week or two.  I’ll have to put out some oranges this week.

Mockingbird is the inspiration for this blog.  When my own internal editor gets too demanding, I listen instead for the voice of Mockingbird, my new editor of choice: “Oh, just say it again.  Say it more forcefully.  Say it three times in Spanish.”  I think we’re going to have a very good summer, Old Friend.

 

This is me at 3.
Slides 108

Gratitude List:
1.  Mockingbird is back in the hollow.
2.  The peony stalks are pushing up above the soil.
3.  This phrase, that was in my head this morning, when I woke up: “The life force is wanton and indiscriminate.  Use it.”  It may be time to start keeping a specific journal of the words and phrases that sit in my brain when I wake up in the mornings.
4.  Taking it one step at a time.
5.  Good old Vitamin D
May we walk in Beauty.

Look Out the Window

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My friend Mara’s poetry Prompt from last Saturday (I’m a late bloomer):  “Look out the window. Notice what’s there. Notice what’s not there. Write about it.”

Outside my window in the dying day
the little wooden spring house
is a smudge of white
set among the briars
at the edge of the little bosque.

Outside my window
the pear tree begins
to push its leaves
into being.

Like the fox that dashed
over the hillside in the winter
you have passed
through this place
and away.
I wish I could have offered you both
a place of safety.

April 045

Gratitude List:
1.  The bombastic and creative robot parade.  Hours of fun with cardboard boxes.
2.  Clearing away the vines
3.  Respectful disagreement, and how it helps me to be a better version of me when you respect me enough to disagree with me
4.  A new book of poetry is taking shape!
5.  Words, lovely words, especially adjectives: recursive, numinous, bombastic, noetic. . .

May we walk in beauty.