It’s November, so it is time to begin Poem-a-Day again. As I was looking for inspiration for this first day’s poem, I saw some notes I had made for the work I am doing with Kore/Persephone, Demeter, and Hecate. I wanted to set the poem onto the page in a format similar to the way I take notes.
Poem-a-Day Rules for Myself: 1. I am free to write utter crap. 2. My intention is to post a poem every day in November, no matter how small, no matter how late in the day. 3. If I get one good poem out of the month, I will celebrate.
Gratitude List: 1. My parents are safe and well in their new apartment. 2. The way the light angles in during this season. 3. My incredible students–I love watching the seniors create and present their Local Legends and Lore presentations on our Halloween Trail every year. I had to miss it this year because of my parents’ move, but helping them prepare is always a highlight. 4. An extra hour of sleep tonight. 5. Rituals to mark the changing seasons (externally and internally) May we walk in Beauty!
I have been writing. Really! I just haven’t been posting here. This season, I have gotten myself into a little bit of a bind with the artistic disciplines. I’m doing #The100DayProject, making a book a day, and I’m writing a poem a day in April. These are the things that keep my mind alive and questing during the stress of the spring season at school. The quick publish/post for daily poem and book has been Instagram and Substack, and so I will post a catalogue of some of my favorite poems and books here today.
Today is the last day of November’s Poem-a-Day. As always at this point, I am ready to be free of the daily discipline of poeming for a little while. And today was long, filled with beauty and good family time celebrating the life of my Aunt Gloria, and many hours on the road. So I’m happy to finish the poem process today.
Tomorrow, however, I will begin a new series, suggested by the Advent materials we received at church last week. Every day for the next 25, we have been given a word (one each day) to meditate on and to illustrate with a photograph. So I might post some or all of those here.
Here is today’s poem: First Lesson of Poeming by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Grasp the idea, I mean the corncob, firmly, but not so firmly that you harm the tender kernels inside, and pull it firmly, but ever so gently, downward and away from the stalk.
Holding it in your palm like the golden treasure it is, begin to pull away the layers of husk. Some people tear the husk down in two or three neat strokes, but you should take your time, noticing the way the tough and weathered outer husk gives way to tender green beneath, the way the silk shifts with each layer you remove, the grass-sweet corn smell released, and finally, the rows of sweet kernels, golden and waiting.
Gratitude List: 1. Cousins and aunts and uncles 2. Aunt Gloria’s wise words: “Go with the flow.” 3. Cousin Karen’s wise words: “Stay curious.” 4. Traveling with my parents to the Shenandoah Valley, on a golden day. 5. Cherry Delight May we walk in Beauty!
“I don’t always feel like I belong, or like I understand the unwritten rules of certain groups, even though I think I am a pretty good observer of human nature. So when I am in a group whose rules accept everyone’s awkwardness and oddness unconditionally, which loves each one not in spite of our oddities, but because of them, then I feel safe. Then I feel belonging. I am especially grateful to those of you who know how to extend unconditional welcome in ways that make everyone believe they belong.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. Our primary need for the various life forms of the planet is a psychic, rather than a physical, need.” —Thomas Berry
“All through your life, the most precious experiences seemed to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.” —John O’Donohue
“The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.” —Pema Chodrun, From her book Becoming Bodhisattvas
“Quiet the mind enough so it is the heart that gives the prayer.” —Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Creative acts of social justice constitute life’s highest performance art.” —Rebecca Alban Hoffberger
“If you will, you can become all flame.” —Abba Joseph
“Become all shadow. Become all light.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.” —Audre Lorde
“The first duty of love is to listen.” —Paul Tillich
“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. The opposite of faith is certainty.” —Paul Tillich
“When you go to your place of prayer, don’t try to think too much or manufacture feelings or sensations. Don’t worry about what words you should say or what posture you should take. It’s not about you or what you do. Simply allow Love to look at you—and trust what God sees! God just keeps looking at you and loving you center to center. ” —Richard Rohr
“People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.” —Charles Fort
“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t.” —Shakespeare, The Tempest
Today’s poem is a grounding liturgy. Reading David Steindl-Rast’s little poem “May You Grow Still” the other day, I felt myself returning to my morning’s grounding, growing still, finding center. I’ve begun using those beginning words in my own daily grounding.
Grounding by Beth Weaver-Kreider (after David Steindl-Rast)
Draw in a long slow breath. Pause. Slowly release your breath.
May you grow still enough to feel the Earth beneath you call forth your roots to burrow deep.
Draw in another breath and pause. Release your breath and listen:
May you grow still enough to feel your roots push through soil through mycelium past bones and underwater rivers.
Draw in another breath and pause. Release your breath and listen:
May you grow stiller yet and feel the pulsing starfire at the center of the Earth.
Draw in another breath and pause. Release your breath and listen:
May your stillness bring home to her heart where you feel your roots absorb her fierce and tender fire.
Breathe in and listen.
May you feel that fire rising into your roots, drawing courage into the seat of your being, drawing love into the center of your being, drawing truth into the crown of your being.
Breathing in and out.
Feel the energy of Earth’s fire fill you to your branches and burst from the crown of your head, sparkling above you and around you like a thousand thousand stars. Feel the life force pulsing through you.
Breathe, and breathe, and breathe.
“Healing comes in waves and maybe today the wave hits the rocks. And that’s ok, that’s ok, darling. You are still healing, you are still healing.” —Ijeoma Umebinyuo ***** “I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, A Left-Handed Commencement Address (Mills College, 1983) ***** “No matter where we are, the ground between us will always be sacred ground.“ —Fr. Henri Nouwen ***** “The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.” —Gretel Ehrlich ***** “The fact that these words and the jumble of lines that create their letters has no real, inherent meaning outside of a human context, yet they hum with life, is a wonderful reminder that what we imagine can easily become real and powerful simply because we decide it should be so.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist ***** “Writing at the library. Surrounded by thousands of books, windows into other minds. Some of these writers are living. Some are not. Neatly ordered rectangles of concentrated human life and intellect. A book is certainly a kind of ghost and libraries are pleasantly haunted places.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist ***** “The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” —Virginia Woolf ***** I know nothing, except what everyone knows — If there when Grace dances, I should dance. —W.H. Auden ***** “I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.” —Charles de Lint ***** “The innocence of our childhood lives on, in each one of us, no matter how old or battered we may be. Still that original goodness, that simple goodness, remains within us. Our best nature never grows old. What the Spirit first intended us to be is still there, peeping out from wrinkled eyes, caught in a quick glance in the mirror: the laughing, shining, curious child who lives again. And again and again. For we are made of the intention of heaven, a part of the perfect life at the center of all creation. Watch for your inner self, the ageless soul, and see it smiling back at you, like a little child caught beside the cookie jar.” —Steven Charleston
Even as I celebrate a deeply enriching and inspiring day of conversation and play and good food with my family, I want to also acknowledge that today is a Day of Mourning for Native Nations. The link in the previous sentence will take you to a MCUSA page with brief descriptions of some of the November massacres by US forces against Native communities that took place in the late 1800s, along with some resources for ways to educate ourselves and our communities, and to respond in helpful ways.
I tried coaxing a collaborative poem out of some of my family members gathered around a puzzle this afternoon, but we had trouble keeping focused enough to finish a thought, so my nibling Keri suggested we do an acrostic. The Old Woman of Winter had made an appearance in the first attempt, so I wrote CRONE OF WINTER down the side of the page and asked them to give me words or phrases beginning with the letters. We ended up sticking to words, and this is what happened, and I like it.
Gratitude List: 1. The thoughtful and wise and tender and hilarious conversations around the table and the puzzle and the living room today. It appears that perhaps the members of the family with the strongest executive functioning skills are under the age of 22. 2. Pie. So much pie. 3. The Turkey Trot! I walked a lot more of this one, but came within a minute of my PR last spring at the Race Against Racism. 4. Bald Eagle flying over Codorus Creek 5. The healing properties of laughter May we walk in Beauty!
“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’” —Parker Palmer
Solace is your job now.” —Jan Richardson
“I have noticed when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling ~ their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights, then I start thinking about projects, demands, deadlines, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to be done, not a background to thought.” —Jeanette Winterson
Joy Harjo: “When I woke up from a forty-year sleep, it was by a song. I could hear the drums in the village. I felt the sweat of ancestors in each palm. The singers were singing the world into place, even as it continued to fall apart. They were making songs to turn hatred into love.”
“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.” ―Meridel Le Sueur
“I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.” ―Madeleine L’Engle
“Alas, the webs are torn down, the spinners stomped out. But the forest smiles. Deep in her nooks and crevices she feels the spinners and the harmony of their web. We will dream our way to them …
…Carefully, we feel our way through the folds of darkness. Since our right and left eyes are virtually useless, other senses become our eyes. The roll of a pebble, the breath of dew-cooled pines, a startled flutter in a nearby bush magnify the vast silence of the forest. Wind and stream are the murmering current of time, taking us back to where poetry is sung and danced and lived. … In the distance a fire flickers – not running wild, but contained, like a candle. The spinners.” —Marylou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom
“Do it right, because you only got one time to walk this earth. Make it good, make it a good thing.” —Grandmother Agnes “Taowhywee” (Morning Star) Baker Pilgrim (1924-2019)
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” —Robert Frost
“I believe war is a weapon of persons with personal power, that is to say, the power to reason, the power to persuade, from a position of morality and integrity ; and that to go to war with an enemy who is weaker than you is to admit you possess no resources within yourself to bring to bear on your fated.” —Alice Walker
“The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves.” —Cassius, from ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare
“Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the River.” —Proverb
“Perhaps too much sanity may be madness.” —from ‘Don Quixote’ by Cervantes
I’ve had a very productive day doing things other than poetry writing! So my poem today is my heart’s desire prayer for the new novena that begins tomorrow with Way of the Rose.
Gratitude List:
Bringing the kid home from college for the weekend!
How things sometimes fall together instead of apart. I lost the cap to my air stem when I went to top off my leaky tire, so I drove to our garage to but a new one, and they offered to just go ahead and fix the leak, too! Now I don’t have to fuss with an appointment.
Fall leaves
Peppermint brownies. Haven’t eaten then yet. The mix is there waiting in the cupboard for us to make this evening!
A good car book to listen to on a long trip. Weyward by Emilia Hart is the current one.
May we walk in beauty!
“Never laugh at live dragons.” —J.R.R. Tolkien ***** “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” —Aristotle ***** “In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” —Mark Twain ***** “The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark. Darkness is the ancient womb. Nighttime is womb- time. Our souls come out to play. The darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression falls away. We rest in the night.” ―John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom ***** “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” —Aristotle ***** “The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” —Anais Nin ***** “Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best thing to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change.” —Michelle Obama ***** “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” —Amelia Earhart ***** “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —Lucille Ball ***** “Learn how to take criticism seriously but not personally.” —Hillary Clinton ***** “Like a great starving beast, my body is quivering, fixed on the scent of light.” —Hafiz ***** “Identity is a story carried in the body.” —Sophia Samatar ***** “Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine … and that deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were not less divine …” —W.B. Yeats **** “The heart is your student, for love is the only way we learn.” —Rumi ***** Poet Joy Harjo, from 2012: “Visited with my cousin George Coser, Jr yesterday at the kitchen table. He’s a gift. Always something profound among the stories. The sacred lies at the root of the mundane. And every word is a power element. Each word or sound, whether thought, written or spoken grows our path, the path of our generation, the children, grandchildren, the Earth. . . . We become the ancestors. A sense of play gives a lightness of being. So get out there and play—and be kind while you’re at it. To yourself, too.” ***** Help me to journey beyond the familiar and into the unknown. Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You.
Christ of the mysteries, I trust You to be stronger than each storm within me. I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hand. Tune my spirit to the music of heaven, and somehow, make my obedience count for You. —The Prayer of St. Brendan (attributed to Brendan) ***** The Wild Geese by Wendell Berry
Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over, we taste persimmon and wild grape, sharp sweet of summer’s end. In time’s maze over fall fields, we name names that went west from here, names that rest on graves. We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed’s marrow. Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.
I’ve been feeling like it’s been a good month, poetry-wise, this time around. I am often more consistently disappointed and uninspired by the output of a poem-a-day. I do this not because I think I will end up with thirty excellent poems, but in the hopes that I’ll get one or two that satisfy me. Ray Bradbury suggests that you write a short story every week for a year, because it’s impossible to write 52 bad short stories in a row, and I think it’s impossible to write thirty bad poems in a row. This month has given me more than one that I like so far. Today’s is lacking in energy, but I might revisit the theme again and rewrite it.
Now Is the Time by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Now is the time for web-building, nest-making, mycelial connection.
Now is the time for shoring up our courage, for remembering who we are, and why we’re here.
Now is the time for listening, for receiving our names, for calling in the ancestors for dreaming ourselves into the dream.
Now the time we were made for, the time to enter all the tales we learned in every book we’ve read, where brave children enter the wood, and uncertain heroes take up the quest.
Good advice from my friend Barb: “Find and wear your orange hat honey. There are 750,000 deer hunters in the yard today.”
“You have done infinitely more good than you can imagine. You may not be a worker of miracles, but you are a worker of compassion. Your kindness is reflexive. You instinctively want to help others in need. Like a first responder: you have the stamina it takes to help someone and it shows up throughout the story of your life. You have done more good than you know.” —Steven Charleston
This year I do not want The dark to leave me. I need its wrap Of silent stillness, Its cloak Of long lasting embrace. Too much light Has pulled me away from the chamber of gestation. Let the dawns Come late, Let the sunsets Arrive early, Let the evenings Extend themselves While I lean into The abyss of my being. Let me lie in the cave Of my soul, For too much light Blinds me, Steals the source Of revelation. Let me seek solace In the empty places Of winter’s passage, Those vast dark nights That never fail to shelter me. -Joyce Rupp
“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.” —Nayyira Waheed
“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.” —M. C. Escher
Blessing for the Visitor by Beth Weaver-Kreider
May you who wander, who sojourn, who travel, may you who make your way to our door find rest for your tired feet and weary heart, food to fill your bellies and to nourish your minds, and company to bring you cheer and inspiration. May you find comfort for your sorrows, belonging to ease your loneliness, and laughter to bring you alive.
And when your feet find themselves again upon the road, may they remember the way back to our door.
“A seed sown in the soil makes us one with the Earth. It makes us realize that we are the Earth. That this body of ours is the panchabhuta—the five elements that make the universe and make our bodies. The simple act of sowing a seed, saving a seed, planting a seed, harvesting a crop for a seed is bringing back this memory-this timeless memory of our oneness with the Earth and the creative universe. There’s nothing that gives me deeper joy than the work of protecting the diversity and the freedom of the seed.” —Vandana Shiva
“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” —George McGovern
I decided to do a strip poem today. Sometimes these feel incredibly inspired, but mostly they end up feeling sort of whimsical or silly, like today’s.
Gratitude List: 1. Water (this is a backward gratitude at the moment because the pump is on the fritz, but there’s nothing like being temporarily unable to use the faucet that makes you appreciate water) 2. Woodpeckers! Downy, hairy, red-bellied, pileated. . . 3. Peppermint 4. Simple suppers: apples and cheese and ciabatta and roasted broccoli 5. Sailing ships–My middle division class is reading Peter and the Starcatchers, and so we’re researching what sailing shops looked like so we can understand the nautical vocabulary, and I am getting a little obsessed with old sailing ships May we walk in Beauty!
“What if our religion was each other? If our practice was our life? What if the temple was the Earth? If forests were our church? If holy water – the rivers, lakes, and oceans? What if meditation was our relationships? If the Teacher was life? If wisdom was knowledge? If love was the center of our being.” ―Ganga White
“Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” —Rousseau
“It is wonderful when you don’t have the fear, and a lot of the time I don’t. . . . I focus on what needs to be done instead.” —Wangari Maathai
“I will take my chances with you, with all of you, from any country or any condition, who believe a brighter day for humanity is possible, who open your hearts and minds to a broader vision of diversity, who serve the cause of kindness and speak the language of healing. I will make my lodge with you. I will be honored to call you my relatives. I will face tomorrow by your side, whatever that day may bring, and together we will make our witness, until the wind chases the sun from the sky and the stars begin to sing.” —Steven Charleston
“Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.” — Robert Bly
“Let my anger be the celebration we were never / supposed to have.” —Jacqui Germain
I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness. It’s right in front of me, if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude. —Brené Brown
“The eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.” —Terry Tempest Williams
“You’ve seen my descent. Now watch my rising.” —Rumi
“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.”—Thomas Merton
“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” —Mary Oliver
“Attention is what matters. What we are living through is a time of grotesque inattention. The very act of taking heed, of paying attention, is a political act.” —Kathleen Jamie
Mockingbird Chronicles 