Here is the last daily poem of November. Every year I think I get a little stronger. This year I’m less desperate for the month to end, more confident in what I’ve written.
Morning Meditation by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Let today be what it wants to be Let tomorrow be a seed you store in the intricately carved box of your heart Let yesterday be the distant sound of a train whistle in the dawn
Sit in your quiet place Hear the rustling voices of yesterday Feel the growing light of tomorrow on your open palms, on your closed eyelids Breathe in the memory of what was, and the awareness of what will be
Then put on this moment like a warm sweater handmade in a joyful collaboration between your grandparents and the grandchildren of everyone you’ve ever shown kindness to and know that you belong to this moment.
Gratitude List: 1. This moment 2. That moment that was 3. The moment that will be 4. The ancestors 5. Those who are to come May we walk in Beauty!
I posted yesterday’s poem in a rush, just on IG and FB. Here is today’s.
Sunny November Day by Beth Weaver-Kreider
time winds through this fine afternoon the shine of sun dismissing the gray of days of dark and rain the line of trees on the ridge quietly stark in their autumn nakedness making lines of shadow rows of tree-selves cloned sliding down the hillside marking the memory of themselves marching through time’s steady and inexorable unwinding
Gratitude List: 1. Ugali-making (and eating) with the fam 2. Sunshine in November 3. Laughing with people 4. Being in a body–sensory experience 5. Being unsettled–it moves me forward, won’t let me get too arrogant in my positioning May we walk in Beauty!
Sometimes it takes a lot of reworking and re-arranging, and cutting up phrases to fit to other phrases. This one was almost too easy. I like how it fell together, so I am not going to tug and pull at it for a few more days. I think it’s done. Great Gratitude to all the Facebook Friends who submitted phrases!
Funny, Isn’t It? a Facebook Crowd-sourced Poem by Beth Weaver-Kreider
We had been in camp for three months. In the very middle of the front row, his bony hands clasped in front of him: “That’s why everyone hates each other nowadays— I guess poor guys dont get kissed on the lips.” My stomach drops at the muffled sound of glass breaking. Since when do men care about such things? This is a dangerous time for you.
We have to confront each of our shadow aspects. I was in the habit of considering that etheric little bone defying the course of the waters, but the crucial bit of magic was to keep your focus on every angle of a question. I had decided to build and not destroy, start with the strongest sensation. I didn’t expect it to look so wild.
Learn from those far away and long ago. In many spiritual traditions, sin does not exist. A nation where you can’t ask questions is one that is going downhill. Atonement is unnecessary, since dreams bring guidance from the well of Being. Firebrands ask questions, and I would say she is everything. Her job took on a new shimmering significance. Funny, isn’t it? How it all comes around.
Sources: Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Dream Count. Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-time Indian. Barbery. Muriel. The Elegance of the Hedgehog Callahan, Patti. Once Upon a Wardrobe. Genet, Katherine . The Gathering. Haig, Matt. The Life Impossible. Haig, Matt. The Midnight Library. Harpman, Jaqueline . I Who Have Never Known Men. Helminski, Camille Hamilton Adams. The Way of Mary. King, Karen L. The Gospel of Mary of Magdala. Kinney, Wallis. A Dark and Secret Magic. Klein, Gerda Weissman. All but My Life. Lee, Min Jin. Pachinko. Menakem, Resmaa. My Grandmother’s Hands. Myss, Caroline. Sacred Contracts. Patchett, Ann. Tom Lake. Quinn, Kate. The Briar Club Reichel, Hanna. For Such a Time As This: An Emergency Devotional Rowling, JK. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Shaw, Martin. Scatterlings. Winspear, Jacqueline. The Comfort of Ghosts.
Gratitude List: 1. Playing with words 2. Being on Break! 3. How hard the guitarists and singer worked this morning to prepare for their performance at Grandfriends’ Day 4. Getting things done (this is a recurring gratitude for me–I think it’s about my tendency to procrastinate, so it feels especially soul-cleansing to have a list of things I have accomplished.) 5. Anticipating time with Beloveds May we walk in Beauty!
Today, I am trying my hand at a skinny, a poetic form crafted by Truth Thomas. Eleven lines. Lines one and eleven are any length, using all the same words (11 usually is a scramble of 1). All the other lines are one word each, and lines 2, 6, and 10 are the same word. I started this one, thinking it would take the startling turn of my mother’s original phrasing, but it got a little defiantly dark at the end.
Pile Up a skinny by Beth Weaver-Kreider “Some days just pile up with good things.” —my mother
Some days just pile up with good things even when it’s gray even when the sun even with good days some things just pile up
Gratitudes: 1. Break begins tomorrow 2. This little set of Advent candles 3. Drinking water from my mother’s barley ware 4. When I read a poem that seems to be meant for my moment 5. Big warm sweaters May we walk in Beauty!
For tonight’s poem, I asked randomwordgenerator.com to give me six words. Here they are: memorial, pin, pause, sight, patient, snuggle. The rule is to use all six in a poem.
Doorway Between What Was & What Will Be by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Yes, I will be patient although I am ready and more than ready to pin down the echo to leap the chasm I’ll pause with the dream only just out of sight to snuggle the ghost of the past before I race to make a memorial of the ashes and dust of what once was
Gratitude List: 1. Carli’s piano music this morning 2. Sunshine! 3. Reading tarot for thoughtful and wise women 4. The artfulness of paper wasps 5. That coconut and chocolate cookie May we walk in Beauty!
When I feel my brain turning off, and I still have a poem to write, I decide I’ll go experimental and pull a found poem out of a magazine.
Found Tanka by Beth Weaver-Kreider (found in Oct 2025 Anabaptist World)
people went dancing we stayed home, riveted by borrowed refusals honoring evolving lives to radical transitions
Gratitude List: 1. Grades are submitted for the first Trimester! And it isn’t even 2 am the night before they’re due! 2. Warm shower on a chilly night 3. Anticipating the elder child coming home for the holiday 4. Book Club–such fine, wise women 5. I’m sleeping really well lately. Maybe it’s because it’s new moon May we walk in Beauty!
Sometimes in the gray box of November a door lets in a small light
Sometimes the small light of November makes a space for another breath
Sometimes a quick breath in November makes me feel like I just might make it through
Gratitude List: 1. Lancaster’s ExtraGive 2. The team from church who created the Trans Day of Remembrance Vigil last night 3. Friday 4. Healing stories 5. Making things May we walk in Beauty!
Quiet Piggy Sit down Piggy I do not permit a Piggy to speak Piggies should be seen and not heard Shake it Piggy Bake me a cake Piggy
Awaken Piggy Make a break for it Piggy Stand up Piggy Speak out Piggy Sing Piggy Riot Piggy
Today instead of a gratitude list, I want to mark Trans Day of Remembrance, begun in 1999 by trans activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith to commemorate the murder the previous year of Black trans performer Rita Hester.
In the past three years, our community in Lancaster area has lost at least five young trans people to suicide.
Proportionally, more trans people lose their lives to violence than just about any other group in the US.
What can you do to create safe and brave spaces where everyone is completely free to be themselves and live their truth?
Today’s poem is based on a daily meditation I have been doing with my rosary. I think of each decade as representing one of the elements–Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit–and I map those elements onto the pentacle points of my body: left hand is Earth, left foot is Air, and so on. During the past few weeks, I have been visualizing flowers at those points, as I visualize myself opening to what the day will bring to me.
Meditation by Beth Weaver-Kreider
My left hand holds a stone bowl of rich dark loam and a green shoot that breaks from a seed, emerges, grows, blossoms, fruits, drops seed, and dies only to emerge again, a surging and an ebbing.
A witch hazel tree grows from my left foot, strings of yellow blossom teased by breezes, fruits rattling in the the wind, dragon mouths snapping open
My right foot is on fire with a flamboyant in bloom, the tree’s red petals blazing and alive with bees, the hum of bees like waves of crackling flame flowering into a raging bonfire of blossom.
A blue lotus floats in the pond of my right palm, its single stem anchored deep within me, enchanting blue nymph, serene in her bowl
A field of purple cosmos bursts from my brow, opening my third eye, the home of spirit, petals opening to the sun, gathering the light.
Gratitude List: 1. Flowers 2. Meditations 3. Bouncing back 4. The fierce delight of Middle Schoolers playing gaga ball 5. Doing Crossword puzzles with my seniors May we walk in Beauty!
Oh, goodness. I am exhausted tonight. Here’s a placeholder poem. One of my rules is that the poems don’t have to be polished. I go into the month knowing, especially in November, that I will have some evenings when I struggle to function, and can only publish a little bit of fluff.
How the Day Closes In by Beth Weaver-Kreider
my brain is fogged in caught in the mists not even the foghorn not even the lighthouse not even the grim shadows can guide me tonight my ship is enharbored for the foreseeable future
Gratitude List: 1. Cats who want to be next to me 2. Thanksgiving Break is coming up 3. A brisk after-dinner walk 4. Salmon patties 5. The satisfaction of a good stretch May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 