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Things I Learned from My Mother

May 9, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
That women can run for office and win.
That a song is a great way to wake a child.
That, in fact, there is a song for every
moment of the day, from packing a picnic, 
to washing your hair, to saying yes when
you ought to say no. 
That scrambled egg sandwiches
are a fast and easy meal
and fresh herbs make everything taste better.
That it’s worth staying up way too late
if it means you can get to the last page
of your book. 
To write handwritten thank you letters
for just about everything. 
To make your bed every morning. 
That my body is not a machine
and it matters that I care for it. 
That it’s nice to have just the right glass
for drinking water or wine or tea. 
She taught me to learn new games,
to make new friends, to try new foods,
to enjoy growing old.
That it matters to say grace
every time you sit to eat. 
That no matter how different our values, our votes, 
there is always a foundation for love.
That if I lived a thousand lifetimes,
in every one, I would choose her as a mom.

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Sitting Beside the Cellist During Sound Check

May 8, 2026 by Rosemerry


 for Noah Hoffeld
 
 
With the long slow pull and push
of the bow on the strings
in so few notes he carries
the unsayable into the room
till the air rhymes with loss 
and honey and amethyst sky
 
and every verb I’ve ever known
slips out of the clunky shoes of its syllables
to sit at the foot of the cello
saying, “teach me.” 

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Listening to Glen Velez in a Garden in Ohio

May 7, 2026 by Rosemerry

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Still

May 6, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
Over four years after his death,
I still sleep with Skinny Puppy, the lovey 
my boy treasured and slept with each night, 
even into high school. Flat with no stuffing, 
a soft square body with a small round head.
Every night in the dark, I tuck its worn,
brown fabric beneath my left arm, 
let it nestle up against my heart. 
Every morning, it’s still there.
I make it into the bed. I feel no shame 
in wanting its slight weight against me. 
Such simple comfort. 
Not that I need an object for him to be with me.
I carry him inside. Close as breath. 
But four years after his death, I like 
the reminder he was here. I like
to remember how he loved soft things. 
How he was capable of such tenderness 
in the ways he held the world,
this world that could not manage to hold him. 

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How to Make Popovers

May 5, 2026 by Rosemerry


Just because it is simple doesn’t mean you 
can depend on good results. There are tricks 
to make sure they pop. Preheat the buttered 
pan at 450 degrees. Bring the eggs to room 
temperature. Whirl them with salt till the whole
mixture froths. Warm the milk, but not too hot.
Melt the butter. Be stingy with flour. Mix only 
as long as it takes to sing the first verse of Blackbird. 
But do not invite guests to show off your prowess,
to boast how light, how airy, how balloon-ish-ly
your popovers rise. Pride will slip in and spoil 
the batch. Pride, an ingredient so strong even 
what’s foolproof goes flat. And even if the popovers rise, 
that pride, oh my friend, you’ll taste it. You’ll taste it. 

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Not That I Like It, But I Tell Myself

May 4, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
It is okay to be numb today, 
to be stuck, to not want to move.
It is okay to be so exhausted
with the ache of meeting the world 
that even the extravagant apple blossoms,
all fragrant and fluttersome, 
look like dingy white scraps, used tissues.
It is necessary, even natural 
to sometimes shut down, 
to let the self be cold. 
The wood frog can freeze 
up to seventy percent of its body water, 
can stop its own heart from beating, 
It knows that to freeze for a season
is one way to survive. 
It will thaw and revive come spring. 
It’s okay for a time to slow down. 
To slow to stopping.
To be more solid than flow. 
I remember the years in the orchard when, 
on the coldest nights, we watered the trees, 
knowing how the process of freezing itself
releases latent heat and becomes
a source of warmth for its surroundings. 
Oh wisdom of freezing. It’s not without cost.
Every fruit grower knows that some years, 
there are no apples. That is how it is.
Other years, we delight in what ripens. 
Those years, we feast on the sweetness.

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Instead of Lamenting Aging

May 3, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
Just let the world amaze you. 
                  —Augusta Kantra
 
I want to know these brittling bones
and sleepless nights as transformation, 
my life an expression of the fundamental power 
that drives the universe to dramatically change—
as bud becomes bloom becomes fruit
becomes soil; as star dust becomes 
protoplanetary disks becomes asteroids 
become planets; as girl becomes woman becomes
slower till she’s silence. As dinosaurs become fossils
and dodos become story. All transforms. 
With no end, the universe remakes itself out of itself 
again and again and again. Looking in the mirror, 
I see in these wrinkles the chaos of early Earth 
barraged by space rocks, then a million years 
of rain, rain, rain, that somehow evolved 
into this world of earthworms, and aspen leaves, 
the spiraling song of canyon wren,
silk worms, pianos, cardamom tea, age spots,
night sweats, gray hair, cellular senescence,
and I entirely belong to this wild miasma 
that is ever becoming, each morning, 
each wrinkle a kind of transcendence, 
a path to a place I’ve never been. 

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Watching My Daughter Before Her Prom

May 3, 2026 by Rosemerry

More flowing than walking
she moves down the street,
her green dress billowing,
her shoulders bare.
Sometimes the world 
asks us to do impossible math—
for instance to add more love 
when already we are filled to capacity
with love. And again tonight, I meet it,
the impossible. 

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At the Center of the Garden

May 2, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
When no one
is looking
she touches
the wound
that hides
beneath
her smile
where the scion
of acceptance
was grafted 
to her rootstock
of stubbornness.
Most people
don’t notice
the scar,
focused as they are
on the fruit,
but she 
remembers
the cut, 
the tissue exposed.
How tenderly
she traces
that place
where the union
was formed. 
Since the wounding,
her fruits 
have become 
vibrant, complex, 
so sharp, even tart, 
and so sweet.
 

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When Times Are Dark 

April 30, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
Trust is a porcupine
sitting on the highway
in the middle of the night
not bothering to raise 
even one of his
thirty-thousand quills,
choosing instead to look
right into the oncoming 
traffic, the shine 
of a direct gaze 
more effective 
communication
than any sharpness, 
any barb.
 

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