Poetry

A Poem, A Prompt and a Picture (with a Gratitude List)

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Poem
First, the poem.  Today’s prompt was to begin with “All that I have ever been. . .”  My own chosen prompt, and I really struggled with this one.  I realized as soon as I started working with it that I set it up to be too navel-gazingly self-referential.  Ah, well.  Here’s an attempt:

All that I have ever been
meets in this moment
with all that I will ever be.

Yesterday I will be different
than I was tomorrow and yet the same.

Do we grow backwards into time
as well as forwards?

Time, we know, is no fixed line.
Perhaps it is a plane,
a blank surface which we cover
like a collage.
We slide across the surfaces
laying down colors,
images, and text.

Tomorrow’s Poetry Prompt:
Last month I wrote a poem that opened itself up to some really fun collaboration.  It began “I keep Forgetting. . .”  Tomorrow I am going to finish the “I keep Remembering” poem that I began shortly thereafter.  Join me?  Write one or the other, or both!

Photo:

Rough Beast

And now for Winky’s annual re-enactment of a famous literary quotation.  Any guesses about the T.S. Eliot poem she is thinking of?

(Joss was looking at the nativity scene today and explained to me very carefully how our set is missing the pony with wings.)

Gratitude List:

1.  Easy-open citrus
2.  Fun crafting time with the kids today
3.  We will get well again
4.  Every day brings more light
5.  Really heavy antique quilts

May we walk in beauty.

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

1.  Collaborative poetry!
2.  Looking out into the dawn, through wrought-iron curliques to the walnut tree beyond.
3.  That snugglefest with a cuddlesome boy and a purrsome cat.  (Couldn’t type for a while.)
4.  Yesterday afternoon in the kitchen, fixing up the veggies.
5.  The NYT Sunday Crossword.
Namaste.

The Milk of Heaven

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Poem-A-Day Prompt 30: Write about Milk.  This is the last prompt of the month.  I might take off a day or two before I get back into a poem-a-day groove, this time with my own prompts, perhaps.

Somewhere in the world, the milk is falling,
raining in great drops from benevolent heaven.

Cup your hands into a bowl.
Feel it splatter into your palms
and trickle through your fingers.

Wash your face in it.
Splash it over your eyes and you will see again.
Anoint your forehead and see further.

Pour it into the gaping wounds
where the frenzied creatures
of habit and risk, of anxiety and anger and hate
have gnawed at your insides.

Drink it in great gulps
and feel it soothe your weary voice.
Take it in, breathe it,
bathe in it.

Then lie back like a new babe,
and let it dribble from the corners of your mouth.
There will always be enough.

Title

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Poem-A-Day Day 26 Prompt: Write a Collection Poem about something you want to collect.

I want to collect titles, like the illustrious,
the megalotitulargrandmastermaniac himself,
Idi Amin Dada, His Excellency, President
for Life, Field Marshall Al Hadji,
you get the picture,
except he didn’t think you would,
so along with a collection of
interesting initials, he declared himself Lord
of all the Beasts of the Earth
and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror
of the British Emperor in General
and Uganda in Particular.
Yes, really.

Anyone who could greet him duly
must have passed out at his feet at the end
for very lack of breath.

Me, today I add to my title hoard
Conqueror of the Clutter
in One Small Corner of the House
in General, Queen of Two Cats
and a Flock of Grateful Chickens,
Field Harvester, and,
in this instance in particular,
Spewer of Grandiose Poetry.

You may bow now.

The Truth about the Tree Poem

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Poem-A-Day Day 24 Prompt:  The title begins, “The Truth About ______”

When I said that I was transformed into a tree
perhaps it would have been more accurate
to say that I became a raven
my roots curling into claws
my branches melting into blackness
the rush of the dawn wind in my ears.

Did I say “roots” again?  Pardon me.
My feet are roots, of course, when I am a tree,
but also when I am a rainbow.
Did you know?  A rainbow has roots too
great arcing roots that mirror and reflect
their sky-form.  The earth spectrum of the underworld.
When I am a rainbow, I am a perfect circle
holding the world in my colors.

It may be closer to the truth were I to say
that one fateful day I became a stone
and sank deeply into a stillness so profound
I could not hear even my jeweled heart
burning with the brilliant fire of the Earth.
I cannot recall what happened to my night-black wings
on the day I turned into a stone.

You may think it is not possible, not true,
that right now I am actually hearing you say, “But
a person does not simply turn into a tree
or a stone, into a rainbow or a bird.”
Now, see, I have told you your own thoughts
and you can feel free to be amazed.

But how can I not hear you
when you have become
the gentlest of breezes
and whispered your protest
with a smile
into my ear?

Only Time

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Poem-A Day Day 21 Prompt: Write a Song Title Poem.  Choose 5 song titles at random and write a poem which weaves them together.  I stood at the CD shelf and closed my eyes and chose 5 CDs, then chose the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th songs on the CDs.  I had a pretty negative feeling about the potential layers of the 5 songs that came up with that pattern initially–an angsty darkness that is not mine to claim, even accidentally.  So I shuffled the 5 CDs and chose the odds again.  So, mostly random, and for some reason, that matters a great deal to me.  The list of songs follows the poem.

This is not the only time
when we eat this bread,
when we shine like stars,
when we are filled with plenty
from the horn of abundance,
from that curling cornucopia
showering goodness upon us
from the fields of the beautiful ones
who shine, the watery ones,
those western stars.

Who is this old man
stepping slowly along the path
out of the twinkling shadows
the moon makes over the hills,
a rangy hound at his heels?

Will we remember to ask his name
when he stands before us?
Will we think to thank him
for the names he will bestow upon us?
Only time will reveal the story.
Only the stars will hear the answer.

(“Western Stars,” K.D. Lang, Shadowland; “Only Time,” Enya, A Day Without Rain; “Horn,” Nick Drake, Pink Moon; “This Old Man,” Pete Seeger, A Child’s Celebration of Song; “When We Eat This Bread,” The Dave Brubeck Quartet with the Cathedral Choral Society Chorus and Orchestra, to Hope!)

Breaking Through

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Poem-a-Day Prompt 17: Write a How To _____ Poem.

Start this way: take a good long look  in the mirror.
Then look into the mirror of the mirror.
Make those reflections dance together a while.

Choose a new name.

Lay out the maps, the cards, the itinerary.
Plot and plan, scheme and dream.
Then be ready to throw it all into the wind
if the need arises.

Trust that the Universe will guide you, give you signs,
but sign up for the work yourself, and keep your eyes peeled.
Struggle.  Struggle hard.  The struggle is the whole point.

You will be handed challenges a plenty,
but there will be gifts in abundance also.
Sometimes these are as hard to accept as the challenges.
Time will come when you think you have arrived,
completed your tasks, done your work
only to be hit with another wave of
insecurity or loneliness or loss.

Don’t let it throw you for a loop.
There will always be dragons to meet.
Let them be your teachers.

Pick up stones, make cairns,
trace the journey in pebbles.

Watch for the changes in light.
Mourn the road you did not choose
and move on the one you did.

You’ll find it, around the very next bend.

I am learning quite a lot through this daily process.  Today’s big lesson is to not wait to write my poem until I am dropping from sleep.  Check out Nancy Willard’s “How To Stuff a Pepper” for a really excellent how to poem. 

The Map Home

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Poem-a-Day Day 16 Prompt: Write a last line poem: take the last line of your previous poem and use it to start this one.  (I cheated and went back two days.  Yesterday’s was too poem-specific.)

Recite it every night before bed:

I am the daughter of
the daughter of
the daughter.  Of
Ruth, of Lura, of
Mary Emma.

I am the daughter of
the nephew of
the granddaughter.  Of
Richard, of Elizabeth, of
Catherine who was called Mammy.

Remember these slantwise lines,
that take you back and back.
This is the map home,
the twisted strands
of the genetic story.

Recite their names,
these other, twisting lines,
like rivers on the map, like poetry:

Sojourner, Susan B,
Uncle Walt and lonely Emily,
Harriet who was called Moses.

Lines on the palm,
on the map,
in the blood,
roads and rivers,
a point drawn in a distant past
raying forward to the point
drawn in this moment.
The truth is formed
in concurrent past and future
as the lines are connected,
given shade and shape and weight.

Remember this.  Remember.

Ebb and Flow

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Day 15 Prompt: Write a tradeoff poem.  Swap.  Exchange.

I’ll trade you the crumbling stone wall with a little green snake
for your treeful of orange birds.  My crescent moon seashell
for your sycamore branch shaped like a flying fish.

Will you swap my word scalawag for your flibbertigibbet?
Your dream of a journey through underwater caves
for mine of flying over the green mountains
with a flock of a thousand white birds?

I have always admired that way you have, of making people laugh
by raising your eyebrows just so.  You could have your pick
of my peccadilloes for that one.  Take two or three.

Though I am loathe to part from it, you would be welcome
to the view looking east over hills to my River, if I could have
your big lonesome prairie and marsh.  For just a little while, at least.

I’d take your bucket of tears for just a little while
if you’d hold on to this bundle of rage.  You could keep
the hearth with crackling fire if I could have the gypsy wind.

How about I give you a poem for every apple you share?
If you’re not using that magic wand, I’ll trade it to you for my broom.
And if you have a little extra motivation, I’ll take it
for an old morale boost I have lying around somewhere.

     This is my favorite way to work a poem, to pile up apparently unrelated images and words into a loose structure, and let the meaning arise out of their juxtaposition.  I wouldn’t call myself an Imagist, really, because I do intend for the final structure to gather some sort of meaning or import or weight, but I like when a poem comes together by the sewing together of images.

How to Get Out of a Rut

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Day 14 Prompt:  Write a stuck poem.  This one is sort of a place-holder.  I know what I want to do with it, but I need to let it percolate a while.  Let’s call this Draft #1.

Order the frog legs.
Turn off the television.
Choose a secret name.
Knit yourself a nightcap.
Put on white gloves
and a pillbox hat to go to the grocers.
Plant your lawn in potatoes.

Dream in the daytime, not just at night.
Take apart your broken toaster
to see what makes it work.
Become an artist.  Create something every day.
Wear a cravat.
Befriend a wild creature.
Live out of doors for an entire week.
Memorize a sonnet by Shakespeare.
Recite it every night before bed.