potatoes

Preparation

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Ellis used a fancy app to turn our Christmas tree into a cathedral window.

Gratitude List:
1. The moon and her morning companion.  How brightly beams the morning star.
2. (I don’t really believe in jinxing a good thing, but something in me fears to name this for fear it won’t last.  Here goes, anyway.) SLEEP.  Good sleep.  Long sleep.  While it lasts.
3. Potatoes and mushrooms and broccoli.  Companions, again.  May we accompany each other like the right combination of vegetables, like moon and star.
4. Courage.  My favorite quotation from the Narnia books: “Courage, Dear Heart.”  That was Aslan speaking to Lucy.  Sometimes I hear him say it to me, too.
5. Advent.  Anticipation.  Expectation.  Preparation.  Inner work. Remembering that the Light Returns.

May we walk in Beauty!

Vowel Limit

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt: Choose two vowels and only use those vowels in your poem.  Y is a wild card.  Kind of fun and challenging.  I am choosing I and E because I was thinking of the word thistle today in the fields as we were planting potatoes.

pick this thistle in this field
its sisters will rise in this site

despite the intent
which desires its demise
the thistles will rise

we fiddle, we fidget
intending the best

yet despite my designs
which inspire difference
the thistles will rise

Gratitude List:
1. Planning adventures.  Off to DC tomorrow to ride the Metro, to explore Air and Space, to walk the Mall, and perhaps to see cherry blossoms.
2. Potato planting.  Good help, good company, good hard work.
3. The trees on the hill with their barely-there haze of new red and green.   When I worked at The People’s Place in Intercourse, we used to sell beautiful etchings by the artist Allan Eitzen that I think of whenever I see the trees like this.  I can only find his children’s book illustrations online.
4. Chickadees’ springtime calls: “Suweet!  Suweet!”  Up, then down.
5. Another nice snake skin, this one twisted almost perfectly back around like an ouroboros.

May we walk in Beauty!

Rock Star

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I am a rock star.  I came down out of the fields today and one of my groupies caught sight of me.  “Book?” she asked.  Another head shot up from behind the compost pile.  “Clook!” she yelled.  And then they were rushing me, “Lookee!  Lookee!  Lookee!”  Little feathery bodies racing toward me, wings akimbo.

If you ever feel down about yourself, get some hens.  You too can be a rock star.

Gratitude List:
1.  The community Potato Pitching Party.  Three and a half tons of potatoes, all de-trucked and sorted and re-packed into waiting pick-ups and cars.  By hand.  Woohoo!
2.  Being a rock star to chickens.  Book!  Clook?
3.  Coconut macaroons, no matter how they look.
4.  Working in the windy fields with spring sunshine slanting down.
5.  Quartzite and shale and the way all the field rocks sparkle and twinkle in the sunlight.

May we walk in beauty!

The Wheel is Turning

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

A poem from 2006, to celebrate the turning of the year-wheel into Spring.

Day Turns

The way maple swings its wings spiraling down shafts of dawn wind,
The way chickadee whistles on bitter March mornings,
The way lichen spreads grey-green lace upon the patient rocks,
The way the egg falls from jay’s beak to lie silent, cold, and whole upon the moss,
The way the wren defends her nest,
The way rabbit hints at her home and scratches the packed earth,
The way squirrel scolds her wayward cousin’s child.
The way heron stands more still than thought,
The way the pond reflects the orange air at sunset,
The way snake stalks the field mouse through gathering dusk,
The way the fields are washed in the milk of the moon,
The way dark midnight covers the farm like a blanket.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Those little trees in the understory of the woods, the ones that don’t lose their leaves until spring, whose leaves are wisps of yellowed paper against the mottled floor of the wood.
2.  Finding a nearly-empty (but not quite!) jar of Chocolat in the back of the fridge
3.  The many colors of potatoes
4.  Reading books with the whole family
5.  Writing it down
May we walk in beauty.

Not sure why it scanned so blue, nor why I had the impulse to post it here tonight.  This is my Great-Aunt Lizzie (Elizabeth Weaver–I am named for her) and my Grandma Weaver (Marian Weaver, Lizzie’s sister-in-law).  Quilting.
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