tower

Spell to Tumble the Tower of Patriarchy

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Spell to Tumble the Tower of Patriarchy
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Say: We take back our agency
Say: The daughters will be avenged
Say: The predators have become prey
Say: We predate the predators
and we will rise again
Say: We stand with the ancestors,
the women who died on your fires
the women who drowned in your waters
the women you thought you had buried
deep in the mouth of the Earth
the same Earth who loves us
the Earth who holds the dead dearly
the women you set swinging in air

Say: Our mouths are filling with fire
and we will burn it down
Say: The water within us is rising
and we will flood and we will flood
and we will flood
Say: We are a tremor, we are an earthquake,
and we will shake down the tower
of power and domination

Say:
We will blow and blow and blow
We are hurricane
We are tornado
We are the wind that they call
“The Witches are Passing”

Say: The rosy fingers of Dawn
rise above the new horizon
Say: The ancient Goddess is returning
Say: The new story is beginning

Gratitude List:
1. russet ocher burnt sienna yellow gold orange chestnut walnut
2. How sunlight in autumn opens a door to another world
3. When the poem just comes
4. ReGenAll’s Climate Summit today, knowing that people are doing the good work
5. Finding time to write
May we walk in Beauty!

Falling

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I am having too much fun with friends this evening, so this one will be short.

Every time I climb this Tower,
I think I have finally learned
the secret of flying instead of falling,
how to rest on air, how to sink
through air like water.
Still, each time the falling
comes as a shock,
like the tumble into frigid waters,
the air knocked out of me,
the ego battered by wind and flame.

TOMORROW’S PROMPT:
Tomorrow, after the terror of falling from the Tower, the Fool finds the relief of the Star. Resting in the cool and twinkling light. It is a time of renewal and hope and inspiration. She breathes.

Gratitude List in Honor of Earth Day:
1. Julia Butterfly Hill
2. Rachel Carson
3. Wangari Maathai
4. Vandana Shiva
5. Jane Goodall
6. Friends meeting in the rain to climb a tower that may or may not be there, with four crows flying, mist parting like a curtain, and a red rider disappearing into the west. And a salamander. And nursing pain together.

May we walk in Beauty!

Bedevilment

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today in Creative Writing, we did a fun bit of wordplay from the website Writing Forward. You make lists of a dozen or so nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Then you make a list of prefixes/suffixes. Using your lists, you add prefixes and suffixes to some of your nouns in order to create words of your own. Then you make up new compound words, use nouns as verbs and adjectives as adverbs–all to experiment with using language in different ways.  Today’s poem, using the prompt of bedevilment, comes out of that writing experience.

I have dungeoned my wonder,
enshaded my joy,
chaining myself in the ragecage
I made for my shadowling.

Addicted to fury,
I fought fear with burning,
teethful in reaction,
and wasting my flame.

When you make a rope of curses,
you catch your own head in the loop.

TOMORROW’S PROMPT:
The tower. It may have begun as the Tower of Rapunzel, where her witch-mother kept her waiting. It may have been a fortress, strong and impenetrable, or a solitary place of retreat. But this tower is falling, burning, lightning-struck, and the Fool is falling, falling. To understand the lightning-struck tower, it may be necessary to remember the journey the Fool has taken from learning temperance to the experience of bedevilment and addiction. We find our balance, and then we fail, and so we are thrown off-balance again, and need to find a new grounding. The experience of falling from the Tower is about losing your attachment to your ego. The Fool has to learn that she cannot be completely in control.

Gratitude List:
1. The misty fogginess in the hollow as dusk fell. It felt like a fairy tale world.
2. The way rain brings out the deepness of the colors.
3. Kreutz Creek Library Book Sale
4. Mandalas
5. Kindnesses. Today, standing in the hallway, I watched one of my students who sometimes seems a little isolated by his extreme shyness. He was walking quietly through the crowd in the hall, head down, and another kid saw him and just reached out and bumped him on the shoulder and grinned at him, noticing him. The shy boy smiled back. It might seem like a small, almost unremarkable kindness, but I think it was really actually pretty huge for the shy one. That’s the kind of people these young folk are. I know that my school is not perfect, and that unkind words and bullying occur, but more than that I am aware of kindnesses, of thoughtfulness.

May we walk in Beauty!