Too sharp to be candy,
and yet you manage
to trick the tongue
into willingness.
Other’s may have
better medicine,
may get to the heart
of what’s wrong.
But you, you bring ease,
you relieve.
Your whole purpose:
To soothe until
healing can happen.
To insert a little sweetness
into misery.
To relax what wants to erupt.
To make the moment bearable.
To keep peace.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cough drop, medicine, ode | Leave a Comment »
Check the time. Reach for scraps of the dream you just woke from.
Close your eyes again. Remind yourself of studies that say
you’re still getting rest even if you feel awake. Curse the studies.
Curse the awakeness. Notice how cursing wakes you even more.
Toss. Count breaths of the person sleeping next to you.
Tell yourself not to be resentful of them, though you are.
Touch your hand to the sleep heavy weight of their leg. Breathe.
Try not to remember something terrible you did long ago.
Perseverate on the details. Wish you could apologize,
though you’ve long since forgotten the names.
Determine that starting tomorrow morning you will be a better person
in a belated attempt to atone for past mistakes.
Tell yourself not to look at the clock again. Look at the clock again.
Calculate to the minute how long you’ve been awake. Worry
about tomorrow. Worry about your kids. Worry about the country.
Worry that you worry too much. Refuse to look at the clock.
There is a lake in the night, dark and deep. Feel yourself held by it,
as if you are floating. As if the night buoys you, cradles you like a mother.
Miss your mother. Take a few strokes in the night lake. Notice
how quiet it is. Feel yourself slip beneath its surface.
When the light comes, swim toward the light.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged awake, night, sleep | 4 Comments »
And if they tried
to match the whirl
of my fingerprint,
they’d learn my true
identity is galaxy,
close cousin to the fern,
and sister to the nautilus.
They’d learn I’m most definitely
guilty of Fibonacci.
I leave evidence
everywhere—tiny
invisible swirls,
reminders that I,
too, am hurricane,
eddy, whirlpool,
and sunflower head.
I have been marked
like the pinecone,
spiraling out from the center,
and there’s nothing
I won’t touch.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged fibonacci sequence, fingerprint, spiral | 2 Comments »
… by and by, nor spare a sigh, though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie, and yet you will weep, and know why
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring and Fall, To a Young Child”
The whole time I ran the lawnmower
through brown cottonwood leaves,
I recited Gerard Manley Hopkins
and waded in intricate cross tied rhymes
that defied the straight green paths
I was making. I hope Gerard doesn’t think it rude
I call him by his first name when I talk to him,
as I often do when walking alone.
He never speaks back, but I’d like to think
I’m better at listening for him.
As today when I repeated again his words
about worlds of wanwood leafmeal,
I swear he rose up
in the dry-honey scent of leaf dust
as if to say, this, this, this.
And while I pushed the red Toro
across the leaf-spangled lawn,
I thrilled to know the world as poem,
to know the ambush of tears as tiny wet poems
to know myself as a tired and ecstatic poem
while all around me the leaves continued to fall.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged autumn, gerard manley hopkins, leaves, poetry | 1 Comment »
Sometimes when walking
or driving or sitting in a chair,
I thrill to see some words of yours
float through the air—as if
a cartoon thought bubble
cut loose from your thoughts
filled with calibri sweetnesses
and times-new-roman puns—
and I pluck the words
from the sky and wrap them
around my wrist. They bob
above me like a helium balloon—
sometimes I almost believe
could carry me away.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cartoon, friendship, words | 5 Comments »
all day I spike my tea
with sky—
is it any wonder
by night I’m singing
love songs
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged communion, love, sky, tea | Leave a Comment »
The river in autumn
is clear enough
to see the trout
who swim
in the deeper pools.
There are many ways
to speak.
This is one.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged autumn, communication, river, speaking, student | Leave a Comment »
After the anger dries up
and falls away like an old dried husk,
it might be you feel
like laughing—
at yourself it turns out—
and all that is now possible
whispers to you
like wind in the meadow,
and where before you saw
a single path
you now see thousands,
and you wonder
how you never noticed it before
the way every step
receives you.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
The Renegade Page: Finding the Poetry for the Moment
Tuesdays, 2-4 p.m. Mountain Time, October 20-Nov. 17
Need a pick me up? An infusion of beauty? A reminder of what’s going right? A chance to write about what is most challenging? Every moment—even mid-pandemic and mid-election season—contains an invitation to lean into the world as it is. Join poet and performer Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for a playful, provocative exploration of how to find poetry in everything—from spatulas to depression, from cleaning the kitchen to catalog shopping. This isn’t your textbook poetry—it’s the poetry of your life. Every class we’ll read, write and share poems. $85
Hosted by Weehawken Arts. To register, visit https://weehawkenarts.org/class/the-renegade-page-finding-the-poetry-for-the-moment/2020-10-20/
*
As If Life Depends on It: A Poetry Playshop on Birth and Death
November 1, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. mountain time
When the veil is most thin, come read & write poems about birth & death & how these two miracles charge all the life in between
Now in the season when the veil between the worlds is most thin, come read and write poems about birth and death and how these two miracles charge all the life in between. We’ll consider the Stoic mandate—memento mori—remember your death, and how, paradoxically, it is an invitation to live, humbly and ecstatically. We’ll dance in the playgrounds of metaphor and explore what it is to be alive. What wild or timid ideas are waiting for you to write them? What mysteries are hiding in your heart? Bring your curiosity and your wonder, your fear and your awe. Come surprise yourself. $60
Hosted by SHYFT at Mile High. To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/as-if-life-depends-on-it-a-poetry-playshop-on-birth-and-death-tickets-122320831901?aff=erelpanelorg
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When the brain is separated from the heart, it is capable of doing terrible things to each other and the planet.
—Jane Goodall
And so I try to tend the path each day
between brain and heart.
Whatever smallnesses I trip on,
I try to remember to bow as I remove them.
Whatever weeds try to overrun it—
weeds of should and shame—
I try to yank them out, knowing full well
I never get the whole root.
The more I travel the path,
the easier it is—
though steep sometimes,
and the effort to go on
makes me weep.
And sometimes, it feels unfamiliar,
though I’m sure I’ve travelled this way before.
Frightened, lost, tired, exposed—
yet I try to find and preserve the path.
Because the stakes are too high
when the path is gone.
Because the healing is so great
when I honor the path
step by stubborn step.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged brain, healing, heart, path, stubbornness | 4 Comments »
