poem

Let’s Get Down To Business

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

First, some mulling drawn from today’s Facebook conversations.  Then a poem.  Then a Gratitude List.

Sometimes I don’t know if I can bear the weight of the problems of the world. I get so furious, not just at the military-industrial complex, but at the way corporations have become the ruling classes, the way Monsanto has taken over the USDA, the way our consumer culture is balanced on the backs of slaves and oppressed people elsewhere in the world. I don’t know if we can turn things back. But I know that there are lots of like-minded people out there who want to turn things back. I’m not sure how we do that, but I want to start by putting as much love out there as possible in the meantime.

I don’t mean for that to sound childish or like I am ignoring the problem. I bring it back to the metaphor of the bowl for the heart. I used to think that I could only have one thing in there at a time, either the joyful things full of wonder, or the angry and despairing things. But recently I have pledged to just sit with the bowl open and let it all fall in together. And the whole crazy mix belongs there. The love I have for butterflies and songbirds is precisely why I hate Monsanto so. The delight I take in my children is precisely why the military-industrial complex terrifies me.

How can I maintain the balance in my head when I get so furious and despairing and tired and sad about so much that is happening in the world? Sometimes it feels so schizophrenic to speak of beauty and wonder and delight when something in my heart is cringing in fear of what the future holds for my children. I know that remembering what I love, remembering what holds my heart, reminding myself why I fight, all this helps me to keep doing my work.

If we who care deeply enough to walk the cliffs of despair, if we let ourselves get frozen or lost or broken on those cliffs, then whatever it is that we’re fighting against has begun to win. Maybe that’s it. Instead of just using my rage and despair to fight this thing, I want to find ways to use my love and wonder to overcome it.

Perhaps my work of late has been too passive, too much in the realm of prayer and contemplation. What is the next step, I wonder?

These Are the Words
These are the things that I tell myself, over and over again.
These are the words I use to remember.

Don’t forget to do your soul-work.
Don’t stop because it seems like no one is watching,
because it seems like no one else is doing their work.
They are working.
Ask around. Tell your own story.
Suddenly they pop up like mushrooms,
all over the yard,
like fairy rings that fairly sparkle in the moonlight.

I always say, Be the web. Throw the lines from one to one to one.
Today I say, Be mycelium.
All those underground signals racing through the soil,
through the roots, through the fine hairs so tiny,
so tiny they are more energy than matter.

But that’s what matters.
That’s the heart of the matter.

We’re all doing our work, sending messages to each other,
invisible like energy,
like the sermons of the fungi
traveling those invisible underground highways.

Something is going to pop up.
I say, Something is going to pop up!

One morning you will wake up
and they’ll be there,
not just hiding underneath the leaves
with the shy toads and salamanders,
but spiced throughout the lawn
throughout the lawns
all over the world,
saying

We are here!
We are doing our work!

In the meantime, keep hoping,
keep praying,
keep making magic spells,
like the one my son made today
from dandelions and Virginia Creeper
to bring peace among the chickens,
and from them to their eggs and to us
and then to the whole world.

In the meantime,
keeping speaking the names of the captives.
Your words will set them free.

Keep singing and dancing,
praying and hoping.

Be the Underground Laureate of The Poetry of Waiting.
Be the One who Sings to the Dark Moon.
Be the Dancer in the Sullen Crowd.
Be the Painter of Speckled Eggs.

Oh, I have to say it, though the activists have said it a thousand times,
like Gandhi said it:

Be the change you wish to see.

Until the twining vines of the sacred squash
grow from your heaving heart,
until the song of the whale echoes through your deserts,
until the world is born afresh.
Until the world is born afresh.

This is the song. This is the poem.
This is the story that will heal the world.

Now.
Let’s get down to business.

Gratitude List:
1.  A pair of indigo buntings feeding in the dandelions before the rain.  (Perhaps some day I will write a gratitude list without the wing-folk.  Or perhaps not.)
2.  Ferns.  The ones I transplanted today from the barn wall to the house and walkway were taller than my children.  I think I may just keep adding and adding until the lawn is gone and the children can walk beneath their waving fronds like hobbits.
3.  The feeling of something being released in my spirit as the air pressure changes before rain.
4.  The way people care for your spirit when you ask for help.  That’s what I mean by asking around.  All that good work is being done, all that hopeful energy, all that intentionality, all that tremendous love waiting to spring into action, springing into action even before it is called upon.  Oh, I believe in angels, and some of them take human form.
5.  Conversations about the grandmothers that bring them into the present moment.

May we walk in beauty.  May we walk in love.

Where is the Moon?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

This is pure play, loosely based on a game we made up during supper tonight.  I think I might want to come back to it at some point and re-work the idea.  It reminds me a little of Ted Hughes’ “Amulet.”

Where is the moon?
I think it is in the pond.
Where is the pond?
I think it is under the mountain.
Where is the mountain?
Inside the eye of the dragon.
Where is the dragon?
In the dreams of the fox.
Where is the fox?
In the egg of the hummingbird.
And the hummingbird?
In the shimmering colors of the sunset.
And the sunset?
In the spider’s web.
And the spider?
Oh, the spider is on the moon.

Lura Lauver Slabaugh and a baby
This is a photo of my grandmother Lura Slabaugh.  I wonder how old she was in this picture?

Gratitude List:
1.  All the birdie love in the air today.  A bluebird feeding his sweetheart.  Grackles mating–he did such an elaborate dance with his wings in fans while he sang her a sweet song, and watched her so intently with his bright white eyes.
2.  The way the sun suddenly shone through the clouds when my boy and I were out checking the chickens this morning.
3.  The way the big carpenter bee at the barn swims through the air to check me out–eye to eye–whenever I pass, and then zzzzez away.
4.  Words, resplendent words, audacious, precious, unique, absurd, fetching, delightful, breathtaking words.
5.  The way the Earth feeds us, even beyond what we can plant.  There’s food out there, in the dandelions, the poke, the soon-to-ripen Juneberries, the dock and thistle and plantain.  I use most of these mostly for tea at this point in my learning.  Still, they nourish me.

May we walk in beauty.

Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1.  That impossible yellow of the sun on springtime goldfinch feathers.  Blazing.  Glowing.  Shining.
2.  All sorts of old friends still returning to the hollow.  A pair of blue jays, red-winged blackbird, and the sweetest little family of chipping sparrows.
3.  Getting the message.
4.  Putting my skills to use.
5.  Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day and a town that celebrates.  Thanks to Near the River Bakery (10% off delicious scones and pretzels and cinnamon rolls), Susquehanna Dodge (goody bags for the kids and a free oil change for me), Jimmy Mack’s (25% off ice cream) and Touch of Italy (20% off supper).  We ate lots today, and Ellis read his poem at each place in order to secure us our discounts.

May we walk in beauty.

Finding Your Sacred Song

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I looked up mockingbird in Ted Andrews’ Animal Speak.  He says the keynote of the mockingbird is “Finding your sacred song.”  In these days when the mockingbirds are singing from treetops in every hollow and on every hilltop, I wish you that finding.  May your song rise clear into the air.

Gratitude List:
1.  Deer and lion and rabbit and Suzy.  Messages of compassion and courage and listening.
2.  We managed to catch Pepita without too much trouble after she ran across the street and under the grumpy neighbor’s forsythia bush.  And we have a sort of funny story out of it.
3.  I feel so good about what I accomplished today, all that mowing and making supper (Shepherd’s Pie) and spending time with a friend–and the children didn’t melt down and fall apart in the meantime.
4.  The way swallows climb the sky.  How they beat their wings against the wind and rise up it.
5.  Forgiveness.

May we walk in Beauty.

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.

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.

Wonder on Tiptoe

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here’s another stream of consciousness poem from last month:

These are the doorways.  The passages.
These are the places
where wonder enters the soul on tiptoe.

Here is the speedwell,
up from the earth and smiling through snow.
The breath of the wind
on the ice-white wing of the gull.
Gull’s feather.
The beating heart of the honeybee
and the black lace veil of the monarch.
The moment of hush before sunrise.

These are the liminal spaces.
The cocked arm and quiet face
of a sleeping child.
The birth of a new idea.
The rousing of thought to action
and action to hope.

The hope that is borne
on the wings of the wren.
The way the weight of sadness
will slide away from your eyes
to make a little room for joy.

This is the breaking news of the heart.
First the aconite and speedwell,
then windflower and crocus.
These are the vanguard,
the silent scouts.

For the purposes of this poem
I will be equating gratitude with wonder
and wonder with spring.

Wonder enters on tiptoe.
A flash of impossible orange
flickers high in the poplar tree.
From the newest leaves
on the highest branch
comes a rustling, then a whistle
like calling a dog.
The oriole returns to summon the summer home.

And you–you may stand in the doorway
as long as you like.
Let that bright bird
open spaces for new joy
to fill the rooms
where sadness used to be.

Speedwell
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA


Gratitude List:
1.  Anticipation of the Northern Lights.  Sitting with the family in the car up at Sam Lewis with about 20 other carloads of people, we listened to The Stray Birds house concert on WITF (great music), watched a gorgeous spectrum of a sunset, tried to figure out the source of the funny fire-like lights near the horizon across the River.  Jon did call them the Aurora Boring-all-of-us, but I think he enjoyed himself, too.
2.  Going out for ice cream
3.  Really hot peppers on the beans
4.  Someone added a poem to the Poet-Tree today!  And I don’t know who it was–the boys told me later.  And the tree is a terrible mess–I haven’t gotten it tidied after the last rain.  Thank you for posting, whoever you were!  And sorry it was a mess.  I’ll clean up the context for your wonderful poem tomorrow.
5.  Jimmy Mack’s will give a 25% discount on the ice cream bill on April 26 to anyone who brings them a poem on Poem in Your Pocket Day.  How cool is that?  Local energy for Poetry!  Yay.
May we walk in Beauty!

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.