poem-a-day

A Day in the Hollow

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Katharine’s prompt was to look East, North, West and South and work the first thing I see in each direction into a poem.  At East: the trees of Life and Death (a dead snag next to a living tree); at South, the neighbors’ silo; at West, the lamp post; at North, the rooster on the weather vane.

EAST
Morning will appear
between two trees on the ridge,
gateway between the worlds,
the dead and the living,
and the day born between them.

SOUTH
Blue silo rises
in the next valley over.
Mid-day sun will glint
from the shiny silver dome,
like code meant for the chickens.

WEST
Shadows climb the hill
As the sun tops the west ridge.
The lamp will wink on
and spread a puddle of light
into the misty evening.

NORTH
When the north wind blows
whistling into the hollow
the rooster screeches
from the iron weather vane.
Night settles over the fields.

 

Prompt

Tomorrow’s prompt is also from Katharine Jennings.  She suggested that tomorrow I take Ellis and Joss outside and ask what Ellis sees to the north, and what Joss sees to the south.  If you care to join me, you can find your own children or child-like spirit to fulfill the prompt, or I will try to remember to post my children’s observations in the morning, if you want theirs.

 

Gratitude List:

1.  Papaya with lime that takes me back to the shores of Lake Victoria
2.  Ellis’ utter delight at making an AM radio with his electricity set
3.  Praesiolite in the shape of a wing
4.  Boundaries
5.  Still so very much to learn

May we walk in beauty!

Lost and Found

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

There once was a woman
who entered the doorway
of middle age,
stood in the doorway
quite a while, observing,
as certain people always do
before they enter
a roomful of people.

She watched the groups
of eager party-goers
mingling and chatting,
observed those who
stood on the edges,
like her,
watching.

That first tentative step
into the room
is one of the hardest.
You leave a bit of yourself behind
when you walk in that doorway,
lose some thread of the story.
Turn and look back
through the open door,
and you can watch it
slipping away on the wind
like a strand of spider web.

She took that deep breath
everyone is always telling you to take,
picked up her courage
and walked right in,
a smile on her face.

It wasn’t until
she heard the door close
that a silver sparkle
caught the corner of her eye
and she saw that missing thread
twining and twisting
through the new air
for her to take up again.

 

Prompt

This one comes from my friend Katharine Jennings:  “On the morning of the 15th look west, south, east and north the first thing you see/feel in each direction incorporate into a poem.”  I can’t wait until morning!

 

Gratitude List:

1.  My “Little Room” that was stacked full of clutter has been cleaned and tidied and readied for use.  Good movement of energy once again.
2.  Four boxes/bags of fabrics and shoes and books and clutter are leaving the house.
3.  Growing older
4.  Shadows and reflections
5.  The webs that connect us all

May we walk in beauty.

Feed Me

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Poem about Nourishment, following Heidi Kindon’s prompt.  I feel like this is part of something I have been working to say for years, and it feels like it still needs a lot of finessing, but I am so grateful for the prompt that caused me to put it down:

Feed me.
Let me savor
the pith and the pulp
of a fresh garden tomato.

You can talk to me
about lycopene
and anti-oxidants,
about minerals
and vitamins,
and that will make me
giddy.

But the names
have their own kind
of nourishment:
Sungold
Cosmonaut Volkov
Brandywine
Early Girl
Cherokee Purple
Garden Peach
Indigo Rose
Green Zebra
San Marzano
Mr. Slabaugh
Goldie
Mountain Princess

Tiny little golden orbs,
bite-sized,
and great juicy giants,
crimson and scarlet,
buttery yellow
and deep midnight purple.

Talk to me about
the sun, how each tomato
is born of the light,
how the mother plant
spins those rays
and weaves them,
with raindrops
and the tiny crystals
that it draws from
the earth,
how it weaves them all together
into one magical bundle
to feed me.

 

Prompt for today (Monday):

I finished last night’s poem this morning, so the prompt is for today.  Stephanie White suggested the theme of Lost and Found.  What do you think?  Care to join me?  I am thinking of a couple of tankas or something similarly terse. . .  We’ll see where it goes.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Rich conversations with friends: seeds and secrets, ancestors and our children.  All woven together.
2.  Two boys snuggling with each other on the recliner chair (30 seconds–I’ll take it)
3.  Rain and fog and mist
4.  Desire
5.  Rhythm

May we walk in beauty.

Wisdom from the Stone Mother, completed

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

This one is for Nicki Larue.  I found most of the first stanza in her words on Friday.  Oh my, I have just pooped out on this.  It’s a daunting task.  I think that I will write more of these, many more, but giving myself more than a day or two to finish. 

It’s all one big pool.
One fountain, one single source.
Only take what’s yours for today.
Connect yourself to Earth and Sky and spread your wings.
Listen through the words, for the word that gets overlooked;
that one word could hold the whole story.

You are the Teller of your own story.
Don’t be afraid to dive into the pool,
but remember not to leap before you’ve looked
and swim against the current, to your source
where you will rise from the waters, find your wings
and fly into the dawning of the day.

And it’s your new day,
each moment a new story,
the minutes winging
swiftly past, pooling
into hours, whirling into the source,
a mirror into which you look,

like an open book, you look
each blossoming day
into that source
for clues to your story,
you look into that pool
and see your reflection, with wings,

dusted with color, like butterfly wings
and you turn to look
behind you, to where a pool
of shadow heralds the ending of day,
closing another chapter in your history,
another truth drawn from your source.

Darkness descends, the source
of light extinguished, you fold your wings,
pause in the telling of the story,
listen for that one word which you have overlooked.
Watch how the night overcomes the day,
how darkness spreads outward like a pool.

Prompt

Heidi Kindon suggested a poem on Nourishment.  I love it.  It’s time to step out of the form a little while and hit up a theme.  Who will join me?

Gratitude List

1.  Seven happy hens
2.  A brown egg, a beige egg, and a double-yolked blue egg
3.  Homemade doughnuts for supper!
4.  Watching Here Comes Santa Claus with the family–my favorite Christmas movie.  Yes, and nearly a month late. . .
5.  Malachite

May we walk in beauty.

Wisdom from the Stone Mother

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

It’s just the first third of the sestina.  I pooped out and watched Chinatown with Jon this evening instead of finishing the poem.

It’s all one big pool.
One fountain, one single source.
Only take what’s yours for today.
Connect yourself to Earth and Sky and spread your wings.
Listen through the words, for the word that gets overlooked;
that one word could hold the whole story.

You are the Teller of your own story.
Don’t be afraid to dive into the pool,
but remember not to leap before you’ve looked
and swim against the current, to your source
where you will rise from the waters, find your wings
and fly into the dawning of the day.

Prompt for Saturday
. . .is to finish the sestina, of course.  I’m making my own rules this month, and so I’ll give myself two days for the sestina.  Seems reasonable to me!

Gratitude List:

1.  Quetzal and Panther
2.  Finding the wings
3.  Smoked Sea Salt
4.  Motherhood–learning to hold on, learning to let go
5.  Water

May we walk in beauty.

All That I Have Ever Been Redux

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Back to that phrase that came into my brain in a dream last week, in a rondel, and in a single crazy twisting sentence.

All that I have ever been
is compounded by what I am now,
by all I can avow or disavow
and by all that I have ever seen,

the fields of past folded upward by the plow
of Time into this moment, between
all that I have ever been–
compounded by what I am now–

into the turning future, which will allow
this interweaving, scene to scene,
the colors shifting: red to gold to green,
all times overlaid as one, somehow
a part of all that I have ever been.

 

Friday Prompt
Becky and Dakota White suggested a sestina.  Even though today was a form experiment, I am going to try a sestina tomorrow because this excites me, and because the rondel was fun and satisfying.  Care to join me?  Here’s the Sestina Form description from poets.org.

 

Gratitude List

1.  Suzy was not badly hurt in the accident today.  Hold your friends close.
2.  The thrill of writing in a poetic form.
3.  That tasty wild blueberry granola from Miller’s.
4.  Reading with the kids.
5.  Hawks along the highway and gulls on the lights of the old bridge.

May we walk in Beauty.

Anger, Thursday Prompt, Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

A Word on Anger

You know the burning fury,
when a line of silence
as loud as a scream
begins to work its way upward
from your shoulders
over your ears.
The red waves
behind your eyes
begin to pulse forward.
Time stops.
Your hands turn to claws.

Feel it,
feel the cold grip,
the white-hot brands,
and step lightly to the side.
Look at that anger,
I’ll say to myself,
like the saint in Be Here Now.
What an interesting anger!
What a shape!  What a color!
Oh, notice, notice,
notice how the red begins to blur
the edges of your vision.
Notice how the sounds
are seared into silence.
No one else has an anger quite like this one.
This one is mine, all mine.

A New Prompt
Mmm.  This is getting hard, coming up with my own prompts each day.  I think am going to try a rondel.  Here are Robert Brewer’s directions for rondel.    I’m not sure I’ll be too careful about syllable count–I might blow that off entirely.  I might go to that random phrase generator to start myself off!
Gratitude List

1.  Bright red
2.  Tea and cookies and Marie’s wondrous Christmas tree!
3.  Every night right now, I am incredibly grateful for the coming of sleep.
4.  Post-Christmas de-cluttering.
5.  The poetry of Rumi.

May we walk in beauty.

List Poem, Wednesday Prompt, Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Never Not Broken

Three red stripes of sunrise through torn clouds.
A cat-claw scar down the center of my nose.
The broken spot in my Rumi anthology that always opens
to the one about the moon dropping her clothes in the street.
The crispy pin-feathers on the head of a moulting hen.
The little moon-shaped chip in my cobalt bowl.
The sleeves of that old brown sweater, tattered just so.
The dent in the rear door of Roxanne Buick, from the ice storm
that broke the limbs off the maple at the old blue house on Main.
The welt of a scar across my belly, where my children first breathed air.

Poetry Prompt for Wednesday
What shall it be?  I have been thinking about writing about anger.  A poem about something that makes me angry?  Want to join me?  If you have a good idea for shaping an angry poetry prompt, please help me out!

Gratitude List

1.  Catching my stride again
2.  Collaboration
3.  The women I work with at Radiance
4.  Blue lace agate
5.  Warm sweaters

May we walk in beauty.

Jan. 7 Poem, Jan. 8 Prompt, and a Gratitude List:

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

I am not planning to make a habit of waiting until the next morning to post.  But here you have it.  I am coming to terms with how much daily events and needs can take over the poetic process, even when I am managing some personal writing time each day.  I do not mean this as a complaint, just an observation–I feel pulled lately between the extreme neediness of a three-year-old and the writing of the poem.  My heart and soul are bound up in figuring out how to meet his deeper needs beyond the moment-to-moment challenges, and so what is left for poetry is my head.  Here’s the glosa from yesterday:

Be Melting Snow
“Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.
A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.”  –Rumi

To pursue the path of the poet
apprentice your soul to nature.
Mark how she moves, moment to moment
dance her wheeling rhythms
follow the pathways of water
wander down to the meadow
taste the nectar of the poppy
listen for the scree of the hawk above you
stand silent in the shadow of the crow.
Be melting snow.

Be the thrust of the thaw
the clashing of ice on the river
the flow and the flood
the bursting of seed, the forces of growth
the blood: vitality, fertility, health.
Be the fire at the heart of the sun
the raging, whirling winds of summer.
Become the heartbeat of the Earth Herself.
Wash yourself of yourself.

Then let it go.
Be wide and open as the ocean.
Let the sky unfurl within you.
Be the whine of the mosquito
the whisper of an owl’s wing.
Be patient, forceful, fearless.
Be the dream of the trees
the secret hope of the sparrow.
Go into the stillness.
A white flower opens in the quietness.

Hold that perfect form
within your soul’s eye.
Unhitch the horse of your brain.
See it with your heart
with your hopes.
Feel the bud’s birthing power.
Long for its blooming.
Feel it quiver with wakefulness.
Begin to open, hour upon hour.
Let your tongue become that flower.

 

Prompt

Today I am going to write a list poem.  I like lists, and I like the stacking together of images to see what sort of house they make.  Care to join me?

 

Gratitude List

1.  Grandparents–the kids get a day to re-set after almost two weeks of quarantine and crankies.
2.  Spiders
3.  Stretching and yawning
4.  Radiance–what a marvelous place to spend a day!
5.  Sunrise.

May we walk in beauty.

Jan. 6 Poem, Jan. 7 Prompt, and a Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

I found a Random Word Generator online that spit out eight words for me to choose from in my Ten-Minute Spill. It gave me
hat
cooling
classic
jived
avast
spitefully
motel
thwart

Fine Kettle
Avast! That’s a fine kettle of kale,
she jived, tipping her hat with a wink.

It’s a classic twist on an old saw,
an artful attempt at redirection.

You’ve no idea–
absolutely no idea–
how I have worked to thwart
your bumbling good intentions,
she added spitefully.

And now–
where have you gotten us?
Here in this kettle of kale,
this stew. This mess of fish,
if you will.

Work your way out, if you can,
with your words–
forkful by forkful.

Add sea salt and sesame oil.
Braise until bright green.

And here’s a poem from 1997-1998, the first time I ran across this prompt:

Chasing Chickens

I’ve counted my chickens.
A dozen times or more they’ve dashed–
Dashed, I tell you–
Into blackberry canes,
Wings whirring.

White clouds of dust engulf me.
Their voices chuckle
from the cliff’s edge.

Don’t tell me about chickens.
I’m green, baby. Green.
And I don’t know how
I’m getting home from here.

Prompt for Tomorrow
I am feeling like my poems this round are fluffier and more slapdash than the batch I worked in November. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been sick. Perhaps it’s because the prompts were from outside myself. Perhaps. . .  Anyway, I am going to try a glosa tomorrow. Here are the rules, if you choose to play with me: Choose four consecutive lines of poetry and use that as the epigraph of your poem, crediting the poet. Then write four 10-line stanzas of poetry. The four lines of the epigraph provide the final lines of the stanzas of the poems, consecutively. And the 6th, 9th, and 10th lines of each stanza rhyme. Here is my example from November:  Song for a Change of Heart.  It’s not nearly as difficult as it first appears.  If you’re intrigued, give it a try!

Gratitude List:
1.  Gratitude Lists, to keep me working and processing even when I am tired and cranky.
2.  Clean laundry
3.  The NYT Sunday Crossword is back in the paper this week.
4.  Chapstick
5.  Anticipating busting this cabin fever tomorrow.

May we walk in beauty.