Here, voice, speak
for my thighs.
Speak for my fists.
Speak for all the places
I try to hide. Speak
in cobweb. Speak in rust.
Speak in siren. Speak
in fog. Speak ugly.
Speak rancid. Speak
lost. Speak sour. Speak
stammer. Speak red dress.
Speak busy signal. Speak
fool. Here, voice, take
your slippers off. Take
your apron off. Take off
your corset. Remove
your belt. Consider me
your vessel. Use me up.
Speak it all.
Archive for March, 2013
After Years and Years of Nice, I Consider Expanding My Range
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growing, poem, truth, voice on March 11, 2013| 6 Comments »
Lost
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, lost, memory, poem, poetry, Wisconsin woods on March 10, 2013| 2 Comments »
It was the scent
that drew me there
to the edge of the woods,
the heavy sweetness
of lily of the valley.
And at the edge
of the trees,
I found them,
tiny white umbels,
crenellated bells,
close to the dark,
dank earth.
And then the deep purple
of wild violets—
I followed their fan-like faces
into the shade,
moving from one bunch
to another, gathering
a small bouquet—and then
trilliums! Trilliums!
The thick cream of their petals.
rising above the whorl
of three green leaves. Trilliums!
I knew not to pick—
my mother had taught me
to honor them.
So I sat beside
the white blossoms
before looking up.
Trees. Trees. More trees.
No path. No field. No edge
of the lake. No sense
of how I had come.
I remember I slowly stood
and turned. And turned.
So very alone.
So much beauty still clutched
in my hand. So much darkness
all around. And how did I get there?
And what should I do? I remember
the scent of the lilies. I remember
not wanting to be found.
What Might Happen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, not speaking, pandora, poem, poetry, words on March 9, 2013| 4 Comments »
As a bundle of hay, when carried,
becomes heavier and heavier,
so it is with words we swallow.
They begin, light as the leaf
of a forget-me-not, light as
a golden straw of hay, just a hair
heavier than breath. But the longer
the words go unsaid and the more
of them we swallow,
the more they gain weight,
the more they cripple us unspeaking ones,
and soon it is as if we had swallowed a bed
of river stones. Sometimes
we can no longer move at all,
so burdened we become. Sometimes
it takes a complete falling apart
to release all that weight, all those
pent words. No one wants this, of course,
some great spilling. The gaping wound.
The chaos. The words, and the fear
wrapped around them, exposed.
But it is not so bad as we think.
Sometimes, once bare to the sun
and clear air, the words break out
of the calcified layers
and we see them for all they are,
tiny boxes into which
we pack our worst fears, our dreams,
our anger, our desire, our bliss. We open
the boxes and whatever inside has not
turned to dust grows wings,
and our mouths open, perhaps in awe, perhaps
wishing they’d fly back in.
Four Emptinesses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, emptiness, haiku, openness, poem on March 9, 2013| 2 Comments »
not only the aspen
wear nothing, not only
the sky
*
shoveling
the walk, making a path
for the sun
*
the rose does not try
to re-adhere fallen petals—
still this impulse to fix
*
in the sky, a door,
in the door, a sky, in the
sky a door
Unimaginable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, murder, news, poem on March 7, 2013| 2 Comments »
The locked gate, opened.
The ex-girlfriend in the closet.
The indifferent swimming pool.
I scour news reports
from CBS, The Denver Post, the Vallarta Opina,
looking for a different story,
a different detail,
a different end.
They say the same.
The boy’s body lifeless
in the pool.
There is more.
It does not help
to see the man’s picture.
His bruised cheek, his black eye,
his gaze averted.
I imagine how he, too,
was a boy.
How he, too,
must have had dreams.
How he, too,
must have smelled
the sea in the air.
All day I think
of the mothers.
All day I think
of the sons.
One Wednesday, I Went a-Walking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged children's poem, poem, poetry, W-week, wish, wonder on March 6, 2013| 2 Comments »
in honor of W-week at Mountain Sprouts Preschool
One Wednesday, I went a-walking
to make a wish on a star,
but because it was day
no stars lit my way.
so I wished on whatever I saw.
I wished on the wimpling wing
of a black bird perched on a wire.
I wished on a worm
and a wheel that turned
and a window that gaped ajar.
I wished on a white-seeded weed
that whirled on the whistling wind.
I wished on the woods
growing near where I stood
and I wished on a willow’s bend.
And I had so much fun a-walking
and looking for places to wish
that I went and forgot
the wish that I’d thought
was the most importantest.
Instead I found hundreds of wonders—
the water, the weather … Wa-hoo!
I remember! My wish
was to find happiness,
and wow, my wish came true.
Four More Surprises
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, highway, poem, surprise on March 6, 2013| 2 Comments »
rhymed in ice
the old cottonwood tree—
an altar for emptiness
*
that rock in the highway—
only the drivers think
it’s out of place
*
elk in the windshield—
taking time to notice
how brown its eyes
*
when I forgot
I was waiting, the flower
opened
Again and Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged intimacy, love, openness, poem, poetry, vulnerability on March 5, 2013| 5 Comments »
In less than a minute
the citadel
around the heart
is reduced to sand,
not by the wrecking ball,
not dynamite,
but with the softest voice
speaking the painful truth
of how sad, how broken we are.
In that unlocked moment,
even the air is naked.
It is impossible to imagine
that anything ever came between us,
or that anything ever will again.
But it does come back,
doesn’t it, that thick gray wall.
Sometimes thicker
or taller than before.
Birds come to roost there.
Ivy grows up the face.
Who knows who scrawls
all that graffiti on both sides.
And then, in an instant,
it’s gone again. Nothing but dust.
With the softest voice.
The painful gift. It’s
so messy, so beautiful,
how broken we are.
Lost in Motherland: Writing to discover who we are(n’t)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mothering, ridgway, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, weehawken, writing workshop on March 4, 2013| 1 Comment »
SUNDAY, MARCH 10
Ridgway, Colorado
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
970-318-0150
Motherhood changes things. Amidst the blessings and the challenges, we transform. As one mother put it, “With my first child, I lost my interests. With my second child, I lost my identity.” How do we lean into motherhood’s paradoxical blend of miracle and loss? Writing can help. As James Pennebroke writes in Opening Up, writing “clears the mind” and helps us “understand and reorient our complicated lives” and “helps keep our psychological compass oriented.”
In this program, mother and writer Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer leads other mothers in a writing practice that includes a lot more than just writing. What happens when we ask, “Who am I?” As Ramana Maharshi says, “The purpose of that question is not to find an answer but to dissolve the questioner.” What’s that supposed to mean? Come play.
Every kind of mother is welcome-from prenatal to step to great grandmother. No previous writing experience necessary.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, mother of Finn (8) and Vivian (4) and stepmother of Shawnee (29), is the award-winning author of numerous poetry collections. Her work has appeared in O Magazine, Prairie Home Companion and Mountain Gazette. For 10 years she directed the Telluride Writers Guild. Her favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.
For more information, visit https://activenet006.active.com/weehawkenarts/servlet/adet.sdi;jsessionid=WbRpyZzd0ScL1Ly+P+TNxTgsR2M?activity_id=899&show_all=&pagenum=3&paid=&online=true
Frightened at the Edge
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cancer, fear, poem, poetry, river, singing, surgery on March 4, 2013| 3 Comments »
We were better at it then.
On the muddy desert river
in our yellow rubber boat,
you would sit in front
and I would sit in back
and as our bow
would slide onto the glossy
slick tongue of the rapid,
we’d begin to sing.
Opera. Neither of us
knew a thing about opera,
except that it made us feel
invincible to sing the highest
notes we could hit and to hear
each other trilling just above
the white roar. We thrilled
at the edge of chaos. Joy
in our ignorance. Confusion
did not seem to have the same
bite it does now when you call
me to say the surgery is Wednesday
and you’ll know then if the three tumors
are malignant. I do not sing
when you tell me. Nor after we hang up,
unless you call whimpering song.
Which perhaps it is, though I do not
feel brave, standing on the edge
of this new chaos, you in front
again, this current much stronger
than we can paddle against. I feel
our humanity, how the end is all
wrapped up in the middle,
the beginning, how little we know
and how fragile we are. I look
out the skylight at the buds
on the cottonwood trees.
They are swelling, though not
yet green. They do not resemble
what they will become,
but experience tells us
to expect a bright green unfurling.
We have no experience now
with what comes next. But we
do know how to sing a high warble,
trill it high above the hospital hum.
I am rusty, but mustering the voice
to sing to you from here,
even though I no longer believe
it will keep us from sinking.