rain

Rain and Snow and Sleet

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2014 February 085

Gratitude List:
1. For making it safely home tonight in that–Holy Snowsquall, Batman!  What in the world WAS that?  Okay, so this is supposed to be a gratitude, and I am grateful to be home safely, and the words that I want to use for that stuff out there I don’t want my mother to read on my blog.
2. For my five-years-old-today boy who steals my heart every single day, whose journey here was no less perilous than the evening’s icy drive.
3. For the midwife and doulas and friends and sister and Jon and nurses and finally the surgeon who helped get him here safely on that day so long ago, not so long ago.
4. For the rain on my river this morning as we crossed the bridge.  My river, remember, like you are my friends: it’s not about domination and ownership, but about a statement of relationship.  Then what am I to her?  I am her daughter?  Her admirer?  Her acolyte, her friend, her dreamer, her observer, her watcher.
5. Simply for this day.  I will never see it again.  It’s gone now and we have all grown up that much more, and my memory that swears to remember every sweet moment–the tiny voice of a boy counting to thirty in hide-and-seek, the bright eyes, the rich conversations, the singing (oh, the singing)–that memory cannot encompass it all and hold it forever.  So I will swear to hold the Beauty even when my feeble memory lets it trickle into the haze.

May we walk in Beauty!  May you find something, each day, to love and treasure, amid whatever pain and challenge your life hands you.  May a bright yellow flower call your name, may a stranger offer you an open smile, may the breeze kiss your cheek.  Walk in Beauty.

Ideogram

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<Prompt 22: Use at least three of the following words in a poem: ideogram, remora, casket, eclipse, selfie, wretch>

Four o’clock in the morning
and sleep has dwindled away
like the last drops of late rain

and that remora of remorse
attaches itself so tenderly
to the soft underbelly of the heart

feeding on you, feeding you,
leaving morning’s mark on the soul
like an ideogram for eclipse.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Fabric, texture, textile
2.  Puzzles
3.  Gingerbread and applesauce
4.  Rain
5.  Sharing story

May we walk in Beauty.

Growing Up

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Listen for the songs
of the thousand grandmothers
who sing in your blood
whose voices echo in halls
of wakening memory.

2013 October 019

Gratitude List:
1.  That sunset.  Magenta and true orange, indigo and aquamarine.  The sunset-washed clouds were like wispy versions of mammatus clouds.
2.  Volunteer Fire Department.  Our local FDs are all staffed by volunteers.  These people are amazing.  We had a ride last night in a fire engine at the Wrightsville FD Open House.  It was like being inside the Tardis–bigger on the inside.
3.  Aging.  Looking at some photos of myself yesterday, I noticed how my face is showing my age, and I was happy about that.  Something about seeing pictures of myself in my late teens and early twenties makes me a little uncomfortable–I seem so raw and unripe and unseasoned.  Yesterday I realized that I feel comfortable in my skin–creaky knees and achy back and marks of age–in ways that I don’t think I ever have before.  I am incredibly grateful for that.  I just might start calling myself a grown-up pretty soon.
4.  Rain.
5.  Giving myself permission.

May we walk in Beauty.

Doves in the Rain

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

It’s a little grainy, I know, but I like the way it captures his concentration.  Yesterday afternoon when it was starting to pour, Jon made this little city for the boys, out of a packing insert.  The hours of delight and play and more drawing on the part of the children that has ensued has made this rainy day special.

2013 June 043

Gratitude List:
1.  The way my poets shatter my heart and put me back together again.  I cannot find the reference at the moment, but there is a myth of a goddess who was rent into pieces and then put back together.  It always disturbed me.  Now I think I understand it a little better.  And yes, they are my poets.  I claim them.  Thank you, Leigh and Mara.
2.  The way the mourning dove raises her wings to the rain.  I remember one day in Tanzania when the rains had come late, so painfully late, and the resident flock of doves sat on the packed earth in the new rain and rolled on their sides, each with a wing pointed skyward, letting the water soak them all the way to their wingpits.
3.  All the surfaces in the Market Room are clean and ready.  The curtain will rise in just a few days on the 2013 season of Goldfinch Farm CSA!
4.  A clear-headed day with no sniffles, no sneezing and easy breathing.  This is SUCH a big deal to me, it is worth listing it on a gratitude list.
5.  Watching Jon relax and take a well-deserved farmer nap this afternoon.

May we walk in Beauty.

 

Yesterday’s List–
Gratitude List:
1. Scent of honeysuckle
2. Deep, soaking rain
3. Making new friends
4. A clean house
5. Catbirds

May we walk in Beauty.

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.

Numinous

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I am really liking the word numinous.  Jon gave it to me to chew on the other day.  He will occasionally do that.  “Do you know what numinous means?”  And I’ll do my best to describe what I think it means, and then he’ll read me the dictionary definition.  And he doesn’t do it to trick or trap me–he looks up words that capture his attention, and then shares them.  He also gave me noetic the other day.  I like them both, numinous like luminous, and not dissimilar in meaning either.  Luminous, but more so.  And noetic like poetic, and also not dissimilar, but more scholarly, perhaps; the poetry of intellect.

2013 April 032

 

Gratitude List:
1.  This day, 26 years ago.  Pizza, pool, and a penny for good luck.  I decided that it was time to tell that cute shy boy how much I liked him.  Turns out, he liked me too.  He’s still cute, and sort of shy, and I like him a whole, whole lot.
2.  Flinchbaugh’s Orchard, you are so beautiful!  People, if you live near Ducktown Rd., you owe it to your soul to go sigh at their trees.   Springtime, you may be one tough goddess in your big old mud boots, but I can see your frilly pink petticoats.
3.  Rain.  The fields need it and it’s really beautiful and it makes me feel like I am in Scotland and it brings out the intensity of the colors of spring.  I can repair the Poet-Tree tomorrow.
4.  So many lessons to learn.  This may be turning a challenge into a gratitude.  I think I will never be an expert in matters of heart and friendship and interacting with people.  Sometimes I feel so awkward about who to be, how to be.  But that means there is always something to learn, always a new path to explore.  And for that I really am grateful.  Trying to be, yes.  And am.
5.  Good well-child checks today.
May we walk in beauty.

Silly Song and Gratitude

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

“. . .and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing,
hi-ho, the dairy-o,
and heaven and nature sing.”  –Joss W-K

Gratitude List:
1.  Uncle Mallard floating on the pond this morning in the pouring rain.
2.  Choosing the exhilarating path rather than the bland one.
3.  Surfacing after reading an engrossing novel.
4.  A gift of bright red tulips!
5.  Earth, Air, Fire, Water
Namaste