poem

Clouds, Gardens and Everything Comes Together

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

These are the days when I become a quiet rock,
a quivering leaf, an ear of lichen
listening to the stones grow.
The words have wandered away,
eloquence eludes me,
and all my sentences begin
with the word So.

Wind will sing in my feathers
but my own story waits
like a seed in the heart of earth,
like a dream that must rise through mud,
a bubble, the nymph of a damselfly
crawling through centuries
up the stalk of a smooth green reed
to be born to the blue light.

There is a roaring in my ears
like the sound of grief or rage.
But it is only the lazy hum of summer,
of fireflies clicking their rhythms
into the velvet indigo of solstice,
communing with the moon.

Another day I’ll dawn,
but for now I will sink
slowly into the pond
with Grandmother Moon
and leave my message with the fish.

2013 June 141
The makings of a batch of medicine bags: spinning the wool, crocheting, and adding beads and cord.  Portable and easy to fit in the spaces of a busy season.

Gratitude List:
1.  Clouds.  Not cloudiness, which is its own sort of blessing at times.  But clouds, those Michelangelo works of art that have been so magnificent in the recent spate of changeable weather.
2.  Vegetable Gardens.  Have you seen it, too?  Everywhere, woven through people’s flower patches, a few tomato cages, a wide-spreading squash.  Or off to the side of the house–out front, even–tidy or  wanton, fenced or flowing vegetable gardens.  If this crazy economy has been good for anything, I think it has empowered people to remember that they can grow their own food.
3.  The way things come together sometimes, even when you’re not quite trying.  This is especially nice when I remember the times when things haven’t come together, even when I’ve tried desperately.
4.  Day lilies and chicory.  Bright orange stars on all the back-road banks, and chicory’s beautiful blue eyes, almost as sparkly as my Jonny’s.  Let’s throw in some lace, shall we?  Queen Anne has plenty to spare.  And something golden to balance the lace–buttercups!  And just here, a cascade of lush lavender vetch.  Oh summer!  You fill my spirit.
5.  Making.  There are moments in these busy days when I have to sit down and rest, but my hands still want something to do.  I have found my way back to making again, and am satisfied.

May we walk in Beauty.

Waking Up

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Like the remnants of fog burning away in the morning sun
the last rags of dream whisper through the valleys
of my waking brain, gnats caught in the cobwebs of consciousness.

In the beginning of the year, the drops of mist form words
and a sentence emerges like a sapling from the fog:
All that I have been is compounded in the present moment.

One morning I wake and the spiders whisper the name
of an impossibly green stone, like poison, like miracles:
Dioptase, a viridian eye that sends forth the tentacles of the heart.

Or a song will be ringing in my ears as I tiptoe downstairs
in the dawn: Give yourself to love, if love is what you’re after.
Open up your heart to the tears and the laughter.

I gather the strands of silk and wool and hope that have caught
on the fences between the world of waking and sleeping,
and weave them into the story of the day, the week, the year.

There was this one: I am walking down a sunny city street
and am filled suddenly with foreboding, knowledge of a Terrible Presence.
I know that it will destroy me, and the world, if it senses my recognition.

The key, I learned without learning,
is to keep that knowledge hidden in the back of my brain
and cover it up with gratitude and joy and hope.

(Already I know that I will be revising this poem, to make it less self-referential, less plodding.  But I wanted to get it down today, and this is the place where I do this work.  Welcome to my process.)

Gratitude List:
1.  Towhee is back.  Ellis misidentified him as the orchard oriole.  If you know the two birds or have a bird book handy, you’ll understand why that makes me proud.  He’s getting his birder’s eyes on.
2.  Weighing cheese for the farm store with Ellis.  Impromptu math lesson on rounding up and down to the nickel.
3.  Chocolate cake/brownie goodness.  We have discovered the Grand Unifying Theory.  This is the basis of everything.  I love the Saturday crew.
4.  Phoebe babies in the barn.  It reminded me of the lovely book which my Great Aunt Lizzie gave to us when we were children.  I will read it to my own children again this coming week as we wait for the little ones to fledge.
5.  Ellis making the point that one of the things that is important to him is taking care of the very smallest ones.
(Hmmm.  A lot of Ellis in this list.  He’s a special kid, and so is his brother.)

May we walk in Beauty!

Boxful of Dreams Come True

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

How does one receive
a boxful of dreams come true?
I will name the man in the big brown truck
a priest or professor.  Do I bow or kneel to receive it,
the sunlight sparkling
through leaves of dogwood.
Just stand and smile,
and take it into my hands.
Are there ritual words of thanks and blessing?
Can you know, good sir,
how this act, this moment,
changes me from one thing to another?
How the moment I turn
and walk away from you
I have become something else,
something else entirely?

Song of the Toad
Click on the photo to purchase it on Amazon.

Gratitude List:
1.  My book is here!
2.  The strawberries are in
3.  I won the May Poetry Contest on Versify
4.  That weather out there is as perfect as it can get, and something about perfect weather makes me feel whole and happy.
5.  Did I mention that my book came today?

May we walk in beauty.

The Way You Walk Toward Healing

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Gratitude List:
1.  Brown thrashers on the lawn in the gloaming
2.  The hope of the hummingbird (soon, soon!)
3.  Such pleasant temperatures and cool breezes
4.  Wise friends
5.  The way you walk toward healing.
And I mean you.
So many people I know have lived
through such losses.
Lived, and then chosen
somehow, to put a foot forward
then another, to take the next breath
when your chest has been crushed by grief.
Perhaps you cannot understand this
or perhaps you can:
you have unleashed into the world
such bigness of grace
in those moments of choosing
just the next step, the next breath.
It may have felt like a slog
or like nothing, or hell
but you walked on, you breathed.
Take it for what it is worth:
some learning soul somewhere
has noticed and seen it
for the grace that it is.

May we walk in beauty.

Don’t Know Where It Came From

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Today green the sun rose
and red down again descended.
Sang high in golden birds were singing,
wild the morning spent.

Before the west began in shadow,
out of yonder called the day.
Within the margin birds at vespers
all for indigo, for summons.

Release!  The day, the wander
wondering in the finches’ song.
I would have dawned a tangerine sun
but the orb forgave my tardiness.

Gratitude List:
1.  The way sun twinkles through oak leaves.
2.  Butter-yellow Tiger Swallowtail.
3.  Always beginning again.
4.  Water is flowing.
5.  There is no expiration date on my dreams.

May we walk in Beauty!

Tanka Play

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

For tonight, a little tanka, a syllable count poem of five lines (5/7/5/7/7). I am not sure exactly where this came from, but sometimes you just have to let a poem happen, as Winnie the Pooh says you should.

Well, They Do

The tree is behind
the big red barn is behind
the swing is behind
the sweat lodge frame is behind
the field where vultures lay eggs.

Here is a picture of an African Eagle Owl, not a vulture.  Just because.2013 May 032

Gratitude List:
1.  First Responders
2.  Red Poppy
3.  Second Chances
4.  Warm Hugs
5.  General Silliness

May we walk in Beauty.

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.