wind

Happy Villaintine’s Day

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Some kid-stories from the weekend:

–On a walk with a Small Boy, we were walking along the hedgerow, and I noticed that deep musky base-note odor and said, “Do you smell the fox?”  Boy blinked, grinned, and said, “No.  That was just me.”  Getting more and more like his dad every day.

–Yesterday, someone was running around the house, yelling, “Happy Villaintine’s Day!  I’m a Villain!”

Gratitude List:
1. Crocheting.  I love this business of taking a piece of thread/yarn/ribbon/string and giving it a form and a shape.  It means something more than it means, you know?  It’s one of those meditative activities that brings clarity and focus to my brain.  Threads of thought, threads of emotion, threads of conversation get twisted and knotted and formed into something tangible.
2. Putting puzzles together with my parents.  Playing Uno with my kids.  Gathering around the table to delight in each other.
3. Wind!  Oh, that wind!  Little snow devils twisting and twirling over the fields.  Wild gusts and squalls whooshing through the hollow.  Wind makes me feel feral, makes me want to fly with the rebel crows, makes my bones ache with longing to travel. (Maybe this is why I need the grounding and centering action of crochet right now.)
4. Transformation.  Transfiguration.  Metamorphosis.  Change.  Shift.  Revolution.
5. So many shades of green.

May we walk in Beauty!

Taking a Walk

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Random thoughts from a walk around the farm this afternoon:

–This Step-Counting contest at school is doing what it is supposed to, getting me out and walking.  I am afraid I am letting my team down with my low, low numbers.  I am more sedentary than I admitted to myself–grading and FB and granny squares and playing Legos keeps me sitting in one place.  A lot.
–On one hand the pedometer feels like a ball and chain.  I check it every half hour or so throughout the day, and I am feeling incredible pressure to get up and walking.  On the other hand, it pushes me to get outside and walk, which I don’t usually take the time for, so it’s freeing me, too.
–I like being on a walk.  I live having been walking.  I like having walked.  I just don’t like going walking.  It’s the anticipation and the getting myself in gear part that I don’t like.
–There were tracks everywhere in the last bits of snow and slush: deer, squirrel, bird, bird, bird, and canid.  Maybe that last is fox, maybe dog, maybe coyote.
–I haven’t seen a coyote in years, though Jon saw a pair of them only a couple weeks ago.  I was pretty desperate to find evidence of them in the tracks today.  One set of tracks had a really largish print, and the claws pushed deep into the snow.
–I found a grey-ish owl pellet and broke it apart to look for the mouse bones. But then I realized it was probably a misshapen piece of raccoon poo.
–The bees are sleeping.  I wonder how they’re surviving the winter in their hive.
–I found two unopened pods in one of the milkweed patches.  We brought them down to the house.  Jon has been collecting milkweed seeds with the hope that he can get some to grow in the spring to give away.
–One Small Boy came up to me and said, “Best snack ever!” as he crunched a chunk of ice in his left hand and then chewed off a bite of the kale in his right hand.
–That yellow frost-nipped kale looks about as winter-bitten as I feel right now.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Wind that scours
2. Fire that transforms
3. Water that purifies
4. Earth that supports
5. Spirit that inspires

May we walk in Beauty!

Geese and Crows and Oh-the-Wind!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1. That gypsy wind yesterday, on Brighid’s Day, that scoured the sky, scooped me through the afternoon, tossed geese and crows about like winter leaves.
2. Those crows, those devil-may-care rebels, those renegades, those defiant fliers.  They leapt into the wind, fierce and fearless.
3. Those geese, less jaunty than the crows, more at the mercy of the winds.  Still, they motored on through the gales.  And then one group banked against the grey background of cloud, and they were snow geese, sojourners already returning.  And then there were whole flocks, and some were dark, the Canadas, who live here all year long, and some were the frosty white northerners with their jet black wing tips.  And did I mention it was Brighid’s Day?
4. And on the subject of the wind, there is that new art installation at the new train station in Lancaster with all those twisty bits that whirl in the breeze and stop my heart for just the briefest moment before it goes dancing away with the wind.
5. And then there was that tangerine glow this morning, and two rays of sunlight shooting a magenta X across the low grey cloud, an X that seemed to mark this very moment in time, the quarter point between the cross points of the Solstices and Equinoxes, this Quickening season of Brighid, of the Candle, of the Time-of-the-Small-Animals-Awakening.

Beauty all Around!

Questions

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

You say you don’t believe the stories the moon was telling
last night as she rose among the sparkling stars
over the rim of your feather pillow?
You say you’ve forgotten the song she sang,
the way her voice wrapped your heart
in a blanket made of spider silk?
You say you never find yourself lost and alone
and deliriously satisfied in the meadows of a dream?

Surely you have heard the singing when the rainbow arcs the sky?
Surely you have seen the pattern of the swallows’ dance above you?
Surely you can’t have missed the feel of the moon’s fingers
as she caresses your forehead on a summer night?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Friends, I am on the cusp of a big change, standing at the very edge of the cliff now, remembering that I have wings, but not sure that I am ready to fly.  Oh, I know the wind will catch me, and I know all will be well, but it is right and proper, I suppose, for butterflies to fill the belly in the moments before the leap.

Today is my last Friday of farm harvest for the summer.  While I will continue to fill in the cracks as I am able, Tuesday will essentially be the day I take off the farmer’s hat and put on the teacher’s hat.

I am going to try to continue to be present here on the blog through the changes, to continue to write gratitude lists, and hopefully poems, too.  But the space may get a little dusty and cobwebby from time to time as I work to figure out how my new morning schedule works, and where I can carve out writing time in my new world.

Gratitude List:
1. The morning’s rosy sky
2. Creative community: currently, this postcard project, and how one word or phrase or idea on a postcard I receive becomes the thread I grab for the next two or three poems.
3. Wings.  The fierce feeling of the wind in the eyes in the moments before leaping.
4. Last night the hamster cage was left open.  I am grateful that Jon found Afil before Fred the Cat did.
5. Shuffling.  How the pieces can fit together in many different ways.  Sometimes I get afraid to shift things around for fear I’ll set the whole thing crumbling, but new patterns begin to emerge instead, new ways of making it all work.

May we walk in Beauty!

Wind Commences to Sing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This one’s not mine.  It’s a Pima poem from In the Trail of the Wind: American Indian Poems and Ritual Orations that my friend Marie is letting me borrow.  I love the rhythm and imagery of this, and I want to copy it.

Wind Song

Wind now commences to sing;
Wind now commences to sing.
The land stretches before me,
Before me stretches away.

Wind’s house now is thundering.
Wind’s house now is thundering.
I go roaring over the land,
The land covered with thunder.

Over the windy mountains;
Over the windy mountains,
Came the myriad-legged wind;
The wind came running hither.

The Black Snake Wind came to me;
The Black Snake Wind came to me,
Came and wrapped itself about,
Came here running with its songs.

Gratitude List:
1.  May Day celebration at Wrightsville School.  Being known as Ellis’s mom.
2.  Still envisioning, creating a long-term plan amidst the short-term frenzy.
3.  Waking up in the morning creating lesson plans.  I think I am still a teacher.
4.  Flying Ms. Suzy’s marvelous kites!
5.  Sympathy card from the vet’s office.

May we walk in Beauty!

Talk to the Wind

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Today’s prompt is to write a “Tell it to the (blank)” poem.

Tell it to the fierce and rowdy wind, my sisters.
Tell your story to the little skipping breezes.
Tell it to the leaves as they scuttle down the mountain
to eddy in the shadows of the hollow.

Tell it to the mockingbird,my brothers.
Tell your trouble to the crow, the wren, the gull.
Tell it to the wild geese, whose message
will reach my ears as they fly above my valley.

I will whisper them to the willows.
I will reveal them to the prayerful gathering
of ferns unfurling by the stone wall.
I will wrap them in scraps of blue silk.

I will hang them from the branches
of my guardians, the dogwood trees,
and etch them on the leaves of the sycamore.
I will place them in bowls of glowing stones.

Tell it to the soft enfolding darkness
as the sun settles below your horizon.
I will watch for your stories by sunrise,
as the dawn washes over the hills.

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Gratitude List:
1.  Poem in Your Pocket Day: The farmer/poet’s heart is happy with all the shy children who came to read me poems in exchange for a packet of lettuce seedlings.
2.  Kind words, kind hearts.  Thank you, my friends.
3.  Fred the Cat
4.  Incentive
5.  That new featherbed–it’s like sleeping wrapped in a cloud.

May we walk in Beauty!

Wherever You Stand

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

<Poetry Prompt 24: Write a poem that responds to a statement or quote>

“Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.” ~ Rumi

Be the spark, the knowingness,
the mother of the moment,
be the dream, the home, and the hope.

Wherever you stand, be the stone
and the wind.  Yes, be the wind
in the trees of the soul of a place.

Wherever you stand, be a memory,
a hope of the future remembering
how
once
we all lived together in peace.

Gratitude List:
1.  CaringBridge.com –A wonderful communication tool to keep friends and communities updated on the health of someone who is in critical need of prayer and caring.
2.  Stories of forgiveness, of grace, of communities and people choosing the higher path.  Perhaps when I feel the need of vengeance, I can be inspired to instead follow in their steps.
3.  Watching Ellis become absorbed in minute crafting details.
4.  Candles and prayer
5.  Cornmeal mush

May we walk in Beauty.

Ready for My Big Girl Boots

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’m gonna be bustin’ out all over, see,
and breaking the rules,
like Spring did when she came
stomping up over the hillside
in her kick-ass boots.
Spring, she’s all bluster and whoosh.

Did you see how she stood,
one foot on each rim of the ridge,
cocked her elbows akimbo,
flounced her frilly pink petticoat
and hooted and hollered
all over the hollow?

Because I want that kind of magic,
that fearlessness and fiercesomeness,
that wild-hearted yodel and galumph.
And a pair of those big girl boots.

Spring, she nodded and winked
at the wide-eyed rooster
on the weather vane.
“Tag!  You’re it!”
Then she skipped off to the River,
over the folding foothills of Mt. Pisgah,
spreading a carpet of green behind her.

(edited 3-17-14)

2013 April 027

Gratitude List:
1.   Sitting by the creek near this tree with a good novel (The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield) and watching my boy engineer dams and pools in the creek, catch crawcrabs.  He’s so sparkly.  Better than a nap, any day.
2.  Play group!  Watching the children grow.  That amazing homemade nutella.
3.  Freckled nose
4.  Making stuff
5.  Wind.  For clearing.  For inspiring.  For bringing a new thing.  For the gypsy ache to move and shift.  For music in the woods.  For words that blow through the woods.
May we walk in Beauty.

Out in the Wind

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here was the prompt for a borrowed poem:  Because today is 3/11/13, I decided to go to a book near at hand, turn to page 13, scan down to the 3rd line, and choose eleven words to use in some form in a poem.  I sort of cheated, by looking through four books until I found one that I could work with.  This was Barbara Walker’s Feminist Fairy Tales, from the tale of Princess Questa.  I chose the phrase, “. . .went out to walk the dunes in the wintry wind, weeping. . .”  The final poem is perhaps a little overwrought, but it was cathartic to run with it, to see where it took me.  (This was to be March Monday Morning, but I seem to have trouble posting poems in the mornings).

Out you went in the wintry wind
to walk the dunes, weeping
with only a scattering of sandpipers
to witness, and a scuttling crab.

The wind tore the tattered foam from the waves,
sent shreds of lather scudding like sailboats
over the sands, and wrenched your voice from you.

You keened your word
into the force of the gale
a wail, like a siren.

The wind snatched it up with such unholy force
it sucked the breath right out of you.

But your word was carried like a seed pod
in the womb of the wind, to break open
high above all our fields, releasing
a thousand seeds to fall to earth
as the wind itself grew ragged
and shattered into calmer breezes.

We felt them fall, like a net upon us,
and now we wait, our breathing bated
to see what will grow.

Gratitude List:
1.  The perfect hexagonal symmetry of a purple crocus in the lawn, three petals curving inward, three curling out.  No wonder the bees find themselves at home in there.
2.  Sorted Legos.  That seems a little OCD, but something about having them all sorted into piles of color shifted the boys’ attention, and their play become more focused and cooperative for a time.
3.  Tiny green things poking up their heads in the greenhouse.  The way onions come up folded like laundry and then gently unfold into the sun.
4.  Corn casserole–yay for last summer’s frozen bounty!
5.  Courage for the difficult conversations.

Namaste

One way to keep the cats from actually sitting on the counter. . .

2013 March 025