Hi friends,
Thank you for your patience as I took a couple weeks off from sending out poems to spend time with my family. Here are many poems written during the days I was gone. Please go to the bottom to see my interview that came out last week with singer Carrie Newcomer and activist and author Parker J Palmer, and four poems that came out last weekend in ONE ART. And now, we return to sending poems out daily! I missed you!
Rosemerry
Twenty Seven Haikulings from Costa Rica and Nicaragua
How many times have you noticed that it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?
—Fred Rogers
it’s not quite doing nothing
this watching sky go from blue
to pink to dark
*
every wave, shell, shoreline, human
breaks and breaks and breaks—
shattering into wholeness
*
as if this time
I’ll finally stand on the board
I paddle again toward shore
*
no word for the way
evening light gathers in the waves—
oh how the nameless shines
*
this moment
a red hibiscus
about to open
*
as he drives his two-oxen cart
on the two-lane highway,
how straight the young man’s back
*
no star tonight
to wish on—
wishing on your eyes
*
walking the long sand beach
silent and hand in hand
gloriously alive with heartache
*
with each laughing failure to stand
on a board in the surf
I am somehow more myself
*
the way the ocean leaves a shell on the sand
then rushes up to grab it back
I don’t quite let you go
*
thrilling in the drum
of each exultant wave,
dog-earring the silence after
*
slipping my hand
beneath the memory of his hand
I tether myself here
*
at the same time
we travel through the Nicaraguan forest
the Baltimore Oriole and I
*
aimless, barefoot days
anchored by love
thousands of miles away
*
white scent of jasmine
slipping between branches
this talking to the dead
*
yes, I tumbled again,
but oh, for a few moments
the ocean carried me as I stood
*
with molten thread
the magma, red and pulsing,
stitches me into its heartbeat
*
momenting, orchiding
lushing, dusking, realing, kinning,
nothinging, everythinging,
*
watching the sloth
not move for hours
no fine print
*
in the old cathedral in Granada
I breathe in five hundred years of prayers
breathe out one more
*
leaving the sleeve
of my skin to become for an hour
a wave
*
at the base of the great blue wet cathedral
a plaque written in cursive—
hermit crab trails in the sand
*
whisper of shells scraping
as each wave recedes,
scratching the back of eternity
*
hidden in the dried tamarind pod
a love note written
in sweet amber goo
*
the sloth I saw this morning
surely still draped on the same branch
as my airplane lifts its nose
*
such a patient
homeland—
silence
*
losing the self
let me be surpassed
by love for this world
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Four Poems Published in ONE ART
What should you do if an alligator chases you? What is your current hyperfixation? How can looking out the window save your life? And what do you do when someone compliments you on your costume? These are the themes of the four poems that came out in ONE ART: a journal of poetry. I hope they make you laugh and feel a little warmer and lighter …
The Growing Edge Podcast
It was incredible to be in conversation with two of my heart heroes, singer and poet Carrie Newcomer and author, activist and educator Parker J Palmer, and oh, such a conversation! I love The Growing Edge podcast, filled with humor and sorrow and outrage and openness. We talk about the role of the artist in difficult times, why poems matter, and the importance of showing up–on the page, on the street, and in our own lives. And also, we talk a lot about saying no–which is, it turns out, my growing edge. Listen Here.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Every year, I take a two-week break from sending poems so I can be away from the computer and focus on being with my family. I will write poems the old fashioned way–in my note book. And there they will stay until April 20 when I return to the computer and sending out daily poems. At that point I will send you a big bouquet of poems I wrote in the meantime! And then we’ll return to the regular daily poem routine.
If you want poems during this hiatus, please visit my blog, A Hundred Falling Veils, where you can find poems from the past 15 years or so. (https://ahundredfallingveils.com/)
Or subscribe to my daily audio poetry program, The Poetic Path, found on the Ritual app on your phone. (The Poetic Path)
And please plan to join me in person or online when I get back!
More poems soon!
Rosemerry
*
Upcoming Events Online
April 25
Poetic Medicine Summit 2026
Writing Ourselves into Wonder: Meeting Difficult Times with Poetry
10 a.m.-2 p.m. mountain time
For more info and register, visit here or write summit@poeticmedicine.org
May 6
The Mystery of Grief: Writing into the Loss
5-7 p.m. mountain time
recorded
For more info and to register, visit here.
*
Upcoming Events In Person
April 24, 25, 26
Ars Nova, Shared Visions
Lakewood and Boulder, CO
To purchase tickets and for more information, visit HERE.
April 30, 6 p.m.
Word Sharks: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Art Goodtimes & David Feela
Dolores Public Library, 1002 Railroad Avenue, Dolores, CO
Contact Jillian at jillian@doloreslibrary.org
June 14-19
Regenerating Joy: Poetry as a Practice for Difficult Times Retreat with James Crews
Omega Institute, Rhinebeck New York
To register, click HERE
August 6-9
Poetry Inspired By Nature Retreat at High Camp Hut
Telluride, CO
For more information, visit
https://www.highcamphut.com/poetry
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
so focused
on writing
about beauty
I almost
didn’t notice
the round
green scent
of aliveness
flourishing wildly
all around me
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beauty, irony, work | 2 Comments »
After fourteen years of pink leotards
and bobby pins, sewing ribbons
on pointe shoes and driving home late
from rehearsals, she dances tonight
with feline ease, confidence in the curl
of her fingers, grace in her glance
as she follows the gentle lift of her arm,
and instead of trying to capture
this final recital in pixels, I bid myself
to be completely here, following her
leaps and feeling the fierce inner deluge
of joy and pride and love and thrill
as for one last time she smiles
from the stage and I see her as
the small white-winged angel who could
barely plié, and I see her now as she soars,
almost flies, before, with a wave of her arm,
she bows, turns toward the wings, disappears.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ballet, dance, daughter, mother | 4 Comments »
After the lunch has been made and the breakfast done
and the cats are fed and the child has left for school,
it’s no small thing to slide back into bed with your partner.
Before coffee. Before the day takes you separate ways.
Before phone, before bills, before the endless list.
With the earth ever spinning toward tomorrow,
it’s no small thing to eschew the work, the work out, the walk,
and choose instead to map your naked body to his, to reenter
the realm of rumpled sheets and meet in the temple of touch.
Decades of choices, most of them small. This is how a life
is made, the clothes in a heap on the floor, the air in the room
so quiet, so cool, your bodies together so warm.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged choices, marriage | 8 Comments »
It was late evening. I was sitting on the couch, the purple one my husband made, when I felt the small tickle traveling from my forearm to my wrist. Not wearing my glasses, I held out my arm for my husband to look. “What is it?” I asked. “A tick,” he said, his voice flat, matter of fact. He pinched it in his fingers, then took it to the counter and crushed it with the bottom of a water glass. I had had a good day, listening to a woman speak about how she could still be compassionate toward her mother after years of abuse. I had gone to a dinner in honor of my husband for difficult work well done. I was proud of him and said kind and true things about how I had seen him grow. The skin where the tick had been continued to tickle. In fact, I felt the light prickle of tick legs walking on almost every part of my body. I had to take everything off. I stood in front of the mirror and saw what wasn’t there. No tick. Nor the body I once had. It was not easy to look. I asked my eyes to remember it is possible to say something compassionate, something matter of fact, something true.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, language, mirror, reflection, tick | 6 Comments »
“What on earth can we do to make this sad and beautiful world a little softer for everyone?” — Shannan Martin, The Ministry of Ordinary Places
Once there was a woman who knit.
She knit the sky and the cemetery,
narrow alleys and the deep sea, the highway
and the willow, starlight and the bare bulb.
It was not easy to slip such things onto her needles,
but she knew she could do hard things.
Of course, she doubted herself.
That did not stop her from knitting.
Every moment of every day, the chance
to add everything she saw and tasted, felt
and heard, into one blanket large enough
to touch everyone. It never was quite large enough,
though, she every day, she kept on knitting.
She could feel herself how silky, how cozy it was.
What makes softness is no secret. It is love.
Sometimes she dropped a stitch. Sometimes
she lost the pattern and had to start a row over.
Sometimes she had to make up something new.
But she knew what she had to do. Something. Anything.
Everything she could to make this sad and beautiful
world a little softer for everyone. There is no end
to the work she does. Every day, she picks
it up, admires the progress she’s made, worries
about the holes, starts her knitting again.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged compassion, history, inclusion, knitting, story | 4 Comments »
Because touch is one way we offer praise,
this morning I touch my ears
to the see-sawing song of birds
in the tree beside me. I still myself
to focus on their song, and they stop
singing, as if to tease. I touch my ears
to the silence where the song is not.
Touch the warm tones of wind chimes
stirred by a breeze I barely feel.
Touch the hum of the cars
and the growl of a motorcycle I’d rather
shut out. I think of how my grandmother
used grass, even weeds in her flower arrangements.
She taught me you could make anything beautiful.
I try to stop slandering the traffic noise
and gather it into an audible bouquet complete
with birds, chimes, silence, my breath.
How to make the unwelcome welcome?
How to hold tension in ways that compliment?
All morning, all day, I practice opening
to what isn’t easy to love. I make a vase
of the moment. Add all the sound that’s here.
So much I’d rather not to listen to.
I think of my grandmother. I try to find
new ways to hear.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bouquet, garden, grandmother, sound | 8 Comments »
I imagined every step a step toward integrity,
toward justice. Toward language that respects
diversity. Every step a step toward equality. Truth.
I imagined every step one step closer to peace
in our country, toward peace in the world.
I am old enough to not believe in arrivals,
I am fool enough to believe in love.
I am human enough to believe in community.
I am scientist enough to know we need each other.
Perhaps some part of me wondered what good it did
for a few hundred people in a remote mountain town
to walk together a few blocks, chanting, then walk
back to the courthouse again, but tonight, in my body,
I feel it, the trust in humanity that rises when I think
of how we gathered and drummed and believed
in what our country can be. My heart beats
a new rhythm in time with belonging.
“This is what democracy looks like.”
Tonight, after we’ve all gone home,
I know we’re all still marching.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged community, democracy, integrity, march, politics, protest | 12 Comments »
In soil not yet worked this spring,
two perfect rows of parsley emerge
in a curly leafed celebration of green,
vestiges from last year’s planting.
Where is not garden?
Good hands, what will you do
with this new trust rising
out of what looked like failure?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged failure, garden, parsley, patience, seeds, trust | 6 Comments »