poetry prompt

NPM Day 4: Loss and Redemption

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I offered this as a short story prompt on my FB page the other day, and the results were compelling and moving. Let’s make it into a poem for today.

Write a three- to five-line poem in which you tell a story of loss and redemption.

The veil is torn.
“Why are you weeping?”
Tell me where they’ve taken his body.
 “Mary.”
Morning dawns.

I love that Easter happens so often right near the beginning of April. although he is many archetypes–healer, teacher, revolutionary, dying god, redemptive force–one of my favorites is the Sacred Fool, and I never cease to be moved at the way the story plays this out in Easter and its aftermath, in the stories of Mary in the garden, Thomas the skeptic, Peter the shamed, and the travelers on the road to Emmaus. Each time, hope and relief burst in upon the devastation and despair.

The first one is with Mary in the garden. He approaches he and lets the truth of the story dawn on her in her time, lets the surprise flood in to her devastated heart without trying to push the discovery. And how does she hear the truth that he is alive? When he says her name.

It is my hope that, no matter what your spiritual story, that you will know you are Beloved, that you will be truly named.

Here is a Mary poem I wrote in 2017:

Turning the Wheel
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

it can be that quick
the change from one state to another
there’s that moment of devastating awareness
the kick in the gut and the tumble into the terrible truth
then the cold crypt of devastation
the going numb

but there’s that moment when you turn your face
away from the shadows and into the glare
and you don’t know yet who is it you see
but there’s something in the stance
something about the voice
the why are you weeping
and you don’t dare to hope
but then you hear your own name
and it all falls away
and the wheel has turned
and Love is there

Gratitude List:
1. How the light shines in
2. Holy surprises
3. Stories that bring hope to life
4. So many circles of care
5. Love

May we walk in Love!

“‘Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.” —Roger Ebert

In a mist of light
falling with the rain
I walk this ground
of which dead men
and women I have loved
are part, as they
are part of me. In earth,
in blood, in mind,
the dead and living
into each other pass,
as the living pass
in and out of loves
as stepping to a song.
The way I go is
marriage to this place,
grace beyond chance,
love’s braided dance
covering the world.
—Wendell Berry
(The Wheel)

”You have to begin to tell the story of your life as you now want it to be, and discontinue the tales of how it has been or of how it is.” —Esther Hicks

NPM Day 3: Rhyme Play!

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For National Poetry Month, some of my poetry shelves.

Poetry Prompt for Day Three of National Poetry Month–

Rhyme Play!
Why do we assume that the rhyme has to happen at the ends of lines? Write a poem (maybe four lines, or eight, or twelve) in which the first words of the lines rhyme, instead of the last. Or make the middle word in each line rhyme. Make ALL the words rhyme? Make the first word of each line rhyme with the last word of the previous line—essentially, you’re sticking your two rhyming words together, separated only by the line break. Give yourself an extra challenge and make the first word and last word of the poem rhyme, and you’ll make it a complete circle.

What does that do to the poem when you switch up the rhyme? How does it affect the tone and the energy and the way the line moves from beginning to end?

Here’s an attempt at the last one:
When I think of how you’ve loved me,
see the thread of your tender care,
there in my self-absorbed cocoon,
crooning myself a lullaby,
I wish I had a poem to give you
to tell you how you’ve saved my heart again.

Gratitude List:
1. The fine distinctions of flavor, and the joy of concentrating on scent and flavor
2. Brown creeper sidling up the little oak
3. Delicious supper last night: Thank you, Val! I can now distinguish mocha
4. Succulents. I repotted some of my classroom succulents yesterday. I think they grew happily because I was gone for so long and didn’t overwater them
5. Spring birdsong

May we walk in Beauty!

“Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe. Music is a divine art, to be used not only for pleasure but as a path to Awakening.” —Yogananda

“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.” —Hermes Trismegistus

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” —Jane Goodall

“Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.” —Henri Nouwen

“In the end, we’ll all become stories.” —Margaret Atwood

“Privilege is when you think something’s not a problem because it’s not a problem to you personally.” —attributed to many authors

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” —Shirley Chisholm

NPM Day 2: Acrostic

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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

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
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!