poetry prompt

NPM Day 2: Acrostic

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
I made this bulletin Board this week. As people write poems on leaves, I will staple them on, and we’ll watch the tree leaf out. I might have to make some apples to add.

(NPM=National Poetry Month)
Write an Acrostic Poem
Choose a word—your name, your favorite word, your password (just kidding!), the name of your town, April—and begin each line of your poem with the letters of the word.

For example:
Please understand:
Once upon a time,
Everything hurt
My feelings.

Write one word per line, or make long and rambling prosy lines. Make it rhyme or eschew rhyme.
Acrostics can be addictive. You probably can’t stop with just one.

This one’s more prosey, perhaps, than poetic, but it’s part of my ongoing chronicle:

Obviously, you can
Live without this one,
Fairly easily. When they
Ask, “Which sense
Could you not bear
To lose?” no one speaks
Of smell. But every day, I
Rest my face in roses, hoping.
Yes, today, the tiniest whiff.

Gratitude List:
1. Succulents. It’s not true that you can’t kill them–I have–but they make such pleasant companions
2. The red leaf-buds on the trees against that blue true dream of sky (eec)
3. My sense of smell is beginning–slowly–to return
4. For all its flaws, The Lord of the Rings. We watched The Fellowship again last night, and it is such a marvelous story to drop into.
5. A long weekend. I’ll say it again: A long weekend!

May we walk in Beauty!

“What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.” —Alain de Botton

“We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don’t ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don’t apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.” —Joanna Macy

“We should have respect for animals because it makes better human beings of us all.” —Jane Goodall

“Let yourself be silently drawn
by the strange pull of what you love.
It will not lead you astray.” —Rumi

“If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.” —Harriet Tubman

“The little grassroots people can change this world.” —Wangari Maathai

“Some form of the prayer of quiet is necessary to touch me at the unconscious level, the level where deep and lasting transformation occurs. From my place of prayer, I am able to understand more clearly what is mine to do and have the courage to do it. Unitive consciousness—the awareness that we are all one in Love—lays a solid foundation for social critique and acts of justice.” —Richard Rohr

“You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.” —Anonymous

Shapeshifting and Foolery

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

April POETRY PROMPTS:
Day One–

The Fool, of course!
Today is about shapeshifting, foolery, jesting.

Write a three-line poem (call it haiku, if you need to) that seems like one thing in the first two lines, but shifts to something else in the third line. Bring in a surprise.

Maybe March goes out like a lamb, and the third line brings the lion roaring in.
Maybe you step in the door of the first lines only to step out the door in the third.
Maybe you show your masked self in the first two lines and take off the mask (metaphorically, of course) in the third.

You don’t have to go for a big surprise. It can be a dawning, a quiet wave of change, a whisper, the unfurling of a leaf in the wasteland.

Here’s one I wrote a couple weeks ago:

feathers by the trail
cardinal takes flight
in the belly of the hawk

Gratitude List:
1. Blue carpet of Speedwell
2. Purple carpet of Deadnettle
3. Green carpets of Chickweed and other spring friends
4. Feeling better every day
5. A long weekend to recover in

May we walk in Beauty!

“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.” —Julian of Norwich

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” —Carl Jung

“The historical Jesus probably looked like an average Syrian refugee. You know…the ones we turn away.” —Rebecca James Hecking

“Poems are maps to the place where you already are.”
—Jane Hirshfield

“Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation. The choice is to draw the blinds and shut it all out, or believe.” —Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson

“When you do not know you need mercy and forgiveness yourself, you invariably become stingy in sharing it with others. So make sure you are always waiting with hands widely cupped under the waterfall of mercy.” —Richard Rohr

“All four gospels insist that when all the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene does not run. She stands firm. She does not betray or lie about her commitment to Jesus—she witnesses. Hers is clearly a demonstration of either the deepest human love or the highest spiritual understanding of what Jesus was teaching—perhaps both. But why—one wonders–do Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell the story of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady and unwavering witness of Magdalene is passed over—not even noticed? How would our understanding of the paschal story change if instead of reflecting upon Jesus dying alone and rejected if we were to reinforce the fact that one person stood by him and did not leave? For this story of Mary Magdalene is as firmly stated in scripture as the denial story. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feeling of ourselves? How would it reflect upon how we have viewed, and still view, women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?” —Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal Priest

“When I feel this fog rolling in on me, I light fires of affection in the hearts of others. I tell them in tangible ways how the life they live makes me live mine differently, how precious and important they are to the rest of us. That fire then becomes like a beacon which burns through the grey and which I can sail towards.” –Toko-pa Turner

It’s good to leave each day behind,
like flowing water, free of sadness.
Yesterday is gone and its tale told.
Today new seeds are growing.
—Rumi

Poem a Day: 23

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Today’s Prompts were Social _____ and Touch:

Social Medium
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Tendrils of thought whisper
through ether, through thin
air, through wires which fire
like synapses, brain waves.
The medium notices, raises
awareness, opens her notebook,
types in a rhythm, a patter
of notes, of letters on keyboards.
She knows the byways of
platforms and scaffolds in
digital apps and media, and
touches the stories of others
through digital narratives,
traces the pain she reads
back to its sources. She
wanders through doorways
of future possibilities, opens
new pathways for potential.
She sees you through the
mirror of your screen and
knows the appropriate
application to help you
find your direction.

Poem a Day: 2

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Today’s Poetic Asides prompt is “space.” My friend Linda’s prompt is “silver bullet.”

Faithless
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

These days we divine by numbers
and watch the spiral uncoil,
no longer lazy and languid,
but each day adding the sum
of an earlier day to the new total—
n = (n-1) + (n-3)—
like a poisoned Fibonacci sequence
with hiccups, unraveling into space.

And the madman on the television
is huckstering promises of easy endings
and fantastic fortunes, a silver bullet
for every ill, anything to raise his ratings,

and meanwhile the lions of jazz
are dying of the virus, the poor get poorer
and the sick get sicker, and the hospitals
are scrambling for supplies.

Rogue churches crowd sanctuaries,
passing the virus instead of the peace,
putting their faith in a man
who has proved himself faithless
time again and time again.

No lies, no arrogant bluster,
no matter how they will it so,
will save us now.

Perhaps this is a new survival of the fittest,
where fitness means a willingness
to listen to the science,
instead of the autocratic mumbling
of this fool of a leader
whose god may indeed
roar to life again come Easter–
the Great God Mammon,
trailing behind him
thousands of dying souls in his wake.

Question-Mark Cat

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Lichen on a branch like a lace doily on the arm of a grandmother’s chair.

Brewer’s prompt today is to write an animal poem. As usual, when I leave the poem until the end of the day, my mind has scrambled down too many tunnels to form a coherent poem.

On the green carpet,
a golden patch of sunlight.
A question-mark cat.

Here’s to the Fool!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Today’s poetry prompt is to write about resistance:

I have seen the way the world is weighted,
heard you murmuring the words
distress, despair, disgrace,
marked the way it seems the fates
conspire to place you
underneath the wagon’s wheel.

If I can try one phrase to bless
this wretched space in which you rest
between the gales and squalls,
let it be this:

May your soul be a sail.

Your spirit will resist the winds that drive you
into dusty earth or claw you from the cliff-face.

May you catch that wind and rise.
May you surprise yourself in flight.

Gratitude List:
1. The Chalice Labyrinth.  Balancing my light and my shadow.  Finding my way across the divide between the different parts of me.
2. Six deer silhouetted in the dusky moment just before dawn.
3. And then the sunrise.  I am learning my colors: magenta, chartreuse, indigo, aquamarine, tangerine.  And there’s one that’s not quite peach and not quite tangerine, something I can’t quite name yet.
4. Walking over the fields with my guys: Jon, the boys, and Fred the Cat.  And that bird: peregrine, perhaps.  Or osprey.  Long crooked wings, and white beneath, sweeping over the fields in the spring breeze.
5. Saying yes to the new thing, new growth, new learning.  Trusting, like the Fool, in the grace of wind to catch me in the leap.

May we walk in Beauty!

Calling it a Month

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Today’s prompt–last one of the month–is “calling it a day.”  I really love these challenges, pushing myself to write even when I don’t feel inspired, to put something out there whether I am ready or not.  Sometimes I feel like I just toss out whatever scrap I can come up with, but occasionally that panic to not publicly embarrass myself seems to draw out poems I never knew I had in me.  So while I am looking forward to the rest, I’ll miss the challenge and the thrill of the day poem.

Calling it a Day

I came here because I thought–
oh never mind.  You see,

it’s been on my mind to–
well, you wouldn’t understand.

The band is packing up.
We’re totally out of peanuts, and
someone spilled wine
on my yellow dress.

I thought the dancing was fun.
Didn’t you like the dancing?
And the music kept it lively.

Were you about to say something?
Oh, I thought I heard you start to–
it doesn’t really matter now, does it?

Good night.
You sleep well, too.
Drive safely, now.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Secret poems sent to me by FB message and snail mail.  My heart is full.
2. Mirror, reflection, turning it back
3. Seeing through
4. Book Faeries
5. Networks

May we walk in Beauty!

Lost Language

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Today’s Poem-a-Day Prompt is to write a message poem.

Lost Language

A bark-stripped twig along the path
etched with the burrowers’ runes.

Creekside, the wide webbed prints
of heron’s cuneiform stamp.

Overhead, shifting shapes
of scripts in the migrating flock.

A scatter of leaves on the pavement.
The pattern of bees zipping through sun rays.

When did I unlearn this language?
When did I forget how to read this alphabet?

A message that slips out of memory
just as it reaches the back of my throat.

The last hazy image of a dream.
The world is waiting to be read.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Getting out there.  Deciding.  Starting the search.
2.  I found my old resumes, my portfolio, my syllabi and course schedules from when I taught community college fifteen years ago.  That old me, the younger one, wasn’t too bad.  If she could do that, I think maybe the newer me, the older one, can manage it, too.
3.  A new pair of shoes.  I’m sort of saying that to try to mitigate the sadness that the old ones finally gave up the ghost this morning.  Really, a pair of sturdy, stylish and comfortable shoes that lasts for ten years–there’s some deeper meaning there.
4.  Opening doors for the Universe to pour in.  (Oooops.  I accidentally typed “pout” there.  Heh.)
5.  That poem by Mary Oliver about death, about being married to amazement.

May we walk in Beauty, in Amazement!

How the World Began

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Welcome to National Poetry Month!

So much to do!  I was away from home all day today, so tomorrow I will inaugurate this year’s Poetree in my dogwood.
Stacia Fleegal of the poetry blog Versify offers a challenge to read a poem a day.  I won’t put all mine on videotape, but here’s today’s attempt.
I think I will try the April Poem-A-Day Challenge again.  Today’s prompt is a two-fer: Write a Beginning poem.  Write an Ending poem.

How the World Began

In the beginning, Spider
launched herself into the spring breeze
from a rattling stalk of dried nettle

toward a skinny maple sapling.
She missed the maple.  Landed,
light-foot, in a heap of leaves

gathered around its base.
A quick scuttle upward, launched again
and through the breeze once more

to nettle stalks this time, and
the gossamer cord caught.
Then launched herself once more

into the gentle breath of wind
until she’d spun herself a world,
until she had encompassed all.

In the end, Spider gathered strands
and wove herself a spirit cloth of silver thread
to catch the wandering dreams

of mockingbirds and wild geese
passing over the chilly meadow,
following tomorrow’s sunrise.

 

Gratitude List:

1.  Flicker calling from the treetops this morning
2.  The golden flank feathers of the pheasant who walked through my parents’ lawn this afternoon, and his squeaky screen-door squawk.
3.  The Fool, dancing on the edge, willing to take risks, to laugh lightly at herself, to seek adventure.
4.  Energy.  Taking responsibility for my own, learning to sense it, to listen for it, to watch, to shift it.
5.  The smoke ring that emerged from the palo santo smudge that Nicky used this morning, how it rose so languidly through the grapevines, twisted, turned for a moment into a baby dragon, and dissipated like a mist, like a wraith.

May we walk in Beauty!

Aunt Eliza’s Advice for Lost Children

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

<Prompt 13: Write a Self-Help Poem>  Oooh.  I am tired, but I am loving the wildness of where this one is going.  So I will write down what I have and come back to it later.

Once upon a time there lived a golden child
who followed a trail of bright flowers
deep into the heart of the forest.

That’s you, in case you hadn’t picked it up,
and the forest is the life you are wandering in.
This is the story you chose for your own
in those rainbow days before you were born.

Oh, for most of us, and much of the time,
the forest is fairly navigable, and not too scary.
But sometimes we get caught in the brambles,
overwhelmed by the shadows, befriended
by suave and creepy fellows in wolfskin.

We forget how to find our way,
forget that we are the main character,
the child of the glorious day,
forget our identity,
forget our destiny, our star
forget how to follow our guides,
forget who they are.

So step into the clearing, Dearies.
Have a seat by the fire.
Here’s a little advice:

Keep following the flowers,
the butterflies, the little birds,
whatever drew you in here in the first place.

Go ahead and flirt with the wolves,
but don’t give them Grandma’s address.

Breaking and entering is still
breaking and entering, Sweetie,
even if it’s a cute little cottage.
You never know what’s in the oatmeal.

Listen to the doll your mother gave you.
Your mother’s voice inside yourself
will always lead you true.

Beware of riddling with old women.
Always remember your manners,
and always be kinder than necessary.

There’s a happily-ever-after
right around the bend,
but you might have to travel
half a lifetime and complete
three impossible tasks
to reach it.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Appearing in a friend’s dream.  I feel like my day and night selves are working in tandem.
2.  Cozy clothes on a cold day
3.  Sourdough bread–I finally got the stuff baked, after two and a half days of proofing and rising and prepping.
4. Coalescence
5.  Irridescence

May we walk in Beauty.