before the rose
has even bloomed, already
lamenting its loss
Archive for April, 2013
haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, human nature, loss, poem on April 30, 2013| 2 Comments »
Perhaps Easier to Say When It’s Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, darkness, light, poem, poetry, story on April 29, 2013| 1 Comment »
When it’s dark,
we tell ourselves
any story we can
about the return
of the light. Say
there’s a mother
grieving her daughter
who’s lost
to an underground king.
Say there’s a sister
who hides in a cave
fearing her brother
the god of storms.
Say that through lures
or begging, the girls
are returned, they
bring light
in their wake.
Use history. Say
the light’s always
come back before.
Use science. Say
it has something
to do with the tilt
and the turn and the rate.
Get fierce. Say you’ve seen
enough of hate.
Get desperate. Say
it takes only a crack.
Start chanting. Start
dancing. Bake cakes
filled with cream.
Give your blood. Give
money. Give any offering.
Or taste the darkness.
Begin to know it as itself,
not as the lack of light.
Let it touch you everywhere.
Let it touch your everywhere else.
Feel how infinite it is.
Say nothing. Get quieter.
Be very curious.
What If Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, fear, haiku, love, poem, poetry on April 28, 2013| 1 Comment »
standing on the stoop
of your heart, too scared
to ring the bell
Chasing Lizards with Finn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged catching, letting go, owning, parenting, poem, poetry on April 28, 2013| 1 Comment »
C’mon mom, he says,
let’s find another,
and for an hour
we scour the slot canyon walls
for another lizard to chase.
I point out two here
on the blonde rock.
One here on the red shelf.
I can’t help but hope
they escape.
I don’t have to hope
too hard.
The boy is clumsy
with his two legs,
his lack of tail.
The lizards evolved
in this vertical world.
They scale the walls or find
the smallest cracks
where even tiny fingers
cannot reach.
How many things
have I chased
for the pleasure
of chasing? Some strange
joy in the unattaining of things.
And how many things
have I caught
and reveled in the catching
and soonly forgot.
Finn wedges himself
in the chimney of rock
and reaches for the tail
that slips beyond his hands.
The sky, has it ever been
this blue? I let it catch me
here between the mormon tea
and the warm, red sand.
To the Person Who Stole the Paper Wasp Nest from my Dashboard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, mothering, paper wasp, poem, poetry, theft on April 26, 2013| 1 Comment »
It wasn’t mine, either.
My son found it this winter
on the orchard floor.
The orchard wasn’t ours anymore.
But when we left from visiting the new owners,
we put the thin celled scrap
on the dash of my car
and left it there.
The wasps, it wasn’t really theirs, either.
They gathered the fibers
from dead wood and plant stems
and mixed it with their saliva.
And I suppose we could say
that the plants and trees
had taken from the soil,
the sun, the rain.
My teacher says
everything you love
can and will be taken from you.
For a long time, that felt
like a curse until
it began to feel like freedom—
not the losses themselves,
but the acceptance of loss.
It’s not that I loved
the brown paper wasp nest,
though it did remind me
of that day when we walked
on the rails and no trains came
and my son sang for an hour
at the top of his lungs.
Add this to the list
of the things that cannot be owned.
The song. The memory.
The boy. The land.
A sense of security.
The open, empty combs.
Empty Handed Tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, poem, tanka on April 25, 2013| 2 Comments »
soft and wrinkled
creases ripped, markings faded
though I know it by heart
I unfold it again
this memory of you
Adho Mukha Vrksasana
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, hand stand, poem, poetry, surrender, underside, yoga on April 25, 2013| 3 Comments »
She says, The first place
you notice your lack of commitment
is in your hands. Are they cupped?
Press all four corners
flat into the earth. Feel how the ground
pushes energy back up through your arms.
She says, The next place
you notice your lack of commitment
is in your elbows. If they bend,
you depend on your muscles
instead of letting your skeleton
support you.
*
I think about the undersides of things.
How if you lift a rock,
there’s another, dark world
writhing and wriggling
and so full of life.
*
She says, The next place
you notice your lack of commitment
is in your back, how it bends
like a banana, gets soft like a noodle.
She says, It is easy as standing.
She says, Any fear is a trick of the mind.
*
Not once
have I found a scorpion
under a stone.
Every time I lift one
I worry.
*
She says, Three inches from the wall,
plant your fingertips. At the edge of the wall,
fix your gaze. First bring the feet
just beneath the navel.
Then raise one foot.
Then two.
*
If a woman
stays too long
in one place,
what begins
to grow?
*
She says, The head
is beneath the heart.
She says, It’s another way
to see.
She says, You must overcome
your fear of falling.
She says, Try.
*
Upside down, and
my fear falls out
of my pockets. And something else,
falls out, too, I can’t yet say
what it is,
but the tears afterward,
they were not grief
nor loss, they tasted
more like
rain that falls
on ground
that has just been cleared.
In it Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cruelty, humanity, kindness, poem, poetry on April 23, 2013| 3 Comments »
Will you go with me,
circle no or yes.
That was all the note said,
signed Louie.
It passed hand to hand
beneath the tables
in the back of sixth-grade English.
I circled yes, sent it back,
and waited for Louie
after class by the door.
Perhaps a sign
of true love.
Three days later the Gooch
told me it was a joke.
Everyone knows, she said.
I called him that night
at his home. Is it true?
I asked him. He mumbled
something about how it had
all started that way, but
that he thought I was nice
and maybe we should
go together. He still
ignored me, like he always
did. Did not choose me
in gym to be on his side.
Did not sit at my table
at lunch. Did not chase me
at recess. Did not call.
Did not send any more notes
on wide-rule paper.
I don’t remember now
if I cried. But I wonder
tonight what kind of man
he became, and if he
perhaps came to have
a daughter who was,
like me, the third most
unpopular girl in the class.
And just what would he
say to the neighbor boy who would
treat his girl like that?
And who have I hurt?
Who sits in the kitchen
late at night and then,
for no reason, recalls the time
that I made them feel small.
I am sorry, whoever you are.
Forgive me. I am learning
this art of humanity
hour by hour by hour.
Coming to Terms with the End of Things
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, mother, parenting, poetry, Rosemerry Trommer, The Less I Hold on April 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Coming to Terms with the End of Things
This beautiful blog on Women’s Spirituality published one of my poems today … it’s fun to go through all the poems on this site, food for the soul!
We Make It So Hard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, wu wei on April 21, 2013| 3 Comments »
Oh Silly Fools
trying to unlock
the door of love
using a wrench
and a heave
and a grunt
when all we need
to do
is knock
How She Serves You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, allowing, poem, poetry, self love, shame on April 21, 2013| 1 Comment »
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
—Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks
Shame brings you coffee
to wake you. She has laced
it with cinnamon and chicory.
She sits on the edge of your bed,
offers you the warm cup.
This is not what you expected.
For two years, you’ve kept
the door locked
so she couldn’t come in.
Perhaps you thought
she would smell
like rancid sardines.
Perhaps you imagined
she would grasp you
with hideous, deformed
claws and not let you go
or sit on you until you
deflated. Instead, she loves you.
She tells you so. She smiles
at you with such sincerity
that there is no way
to not meet her eyes.
She does not bring up
anything you have or have not done.
You do that yourself.
Good Morning, she says.
You choose to believe her.
To your surprise, almost
as if you are watching yourself
and in yourself at the same time,
you hug this unlikely friend.
And then—is it because you
leaned toward her instead
of hiding under the covers again—
she leaves. Just like that.
You almost want her back.
The cup, though bitter,
is easier to drink than
you thought
it would be.
You drink it until
there is nothing left.
God, you feel awake.
As if you could walk
to Wyoming from here.
As if you could rip off
the door lock with your bare hands.
As if you could meet anyone,
even yourself.
Memory While Playing Duets with Evie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, failure, father, love, piano, poem, truth on April 20, 2013| 3 Comments »
At thirteen, after eight years
of piano lessons, I lost myself
in a Mozart Sonatina. It was
a competition. I was sitting
at a grand piano at the front
of a church. The judge sat
in the first pew. My dad sat in the back.
I made it through the long runs
of the first movement. Through
the slow diminished chords
of the second. I was clumsy,
my rhythms uneven, my fortes not
convincing, my arpeggios stuttered.
My fingers did not know what they were doing,
though we had been practicing
together for months, though they
had had many good teachers.
I wore a pin-striped tuxedo,
a white ruffled shirt. It was fitted too tight
in my shoulders, but it made me
feel what, like a man? At least
not like a girl. God, I wanted
it over. At the end of the third movement,
I reached to the top of the treble keys
before coming back down
in the final run, but somewhere at the top
my hands returned to the notes of the first movement.
There was nothing to be done
but to finish the thing the way it had begun.
The judge shuffled through
the sheet music, trying to discern
what had happened. I did not cry,
not until I left the room
and I held my dad and he told me
the terrible lie that I had done fine.
He said it with so much love,
but it wasn’t true.
I don’t know where the lines are
between truth and love. Why do we
protect each other the ways that we do?
What else could he say? It doesn’t much matter.
He loved me. I grew out
of the shirt. I told myself the truth.
The Power of Poetry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alan cohen, Hocking Hill, Logan Ohio, Naomi Shihab Nye, poetry festival, Power of Poetry, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on April 19, 2013| 1 Comment »
Sometimes a dream comes true–on Friday and Saturday night I’ll be in Ohio performing with Naomi Shihab Nye, one of my poetry heroes. The people at the Hocking HIlls Festival of Poetry are so welcoming, so warm, so full of fun and love of life. Alan Cohen, the organizer, is an inspiration for how to live poetically, how to support other people in their dreams, how to grow community. God I love what happens when people get together to play poetry … if you’re anywhere near Logan, Ohio, the shows are free both nights.
Walking the Ohio Woods with Paul (and Alan, Evie and Jen)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alan cohen, birding, nature, ohio, poem, poetry on April 19, 2013| 2 Comments »
See, he says
with a wave of his hand,
how to this side
the trees are slender
and on this side
how large they all are.
We can imagine,
he says, that a post road
went through here
and on one side of it
the forest was cleared.
On the other is old growth.
I look, and agree, though
now there is no hint
besides the trees
that this was once
a well traveled way.
I think of all the people
who have walked
through my life,
how invisible their paths
are now. Can anyone else
see the ways I’ve been marked?
Some brought invasive seeds.
Some made light.
*
We hear it
long before we see it—
zee zee zee zoo zee.
A trout lily
bows by the stream.
Open, its six yellow petals peal back.
zee zee zee zoo zee.
Do you know why it’s bowed?
Paul asks me.
I like that he will know the answer.
Inside, he says, are all the sex organs,
and they do not want to get wet.
zee zee zee zoo zee.
He explains
one way other flowers
stay dry is to learn to close up
whenever things get dark.
Now that’s smart.
I think to myself,
Rosemerry, learn to bow.
*
What is this drive
toward opening?
Here: white trilliums
and anemone, pink spring beauties
and ten thousand
blue and yellow violets
all unfold in a mass
affirmation of life
longing for itself.
The beech leaves are
so intent on unfurling
that their bud scales are bursting
and fall from the canopy
like coppery rain in our hair.
zee zee zee zoo zee.
Even this damp land
beneath our feet
is still opening—a widening canyon
carved over 340,040 years
by water moving toward the sea.
One day, we’ll be put
into this earth forever.
For now, there’s this
bird to find, there’s this
drive toward opening.
*
And there it is,
the black-throated green warbler.
It’s yellow. Though I can’t tell
from this distance
to where its silhouette flits
high in the trees.
a tiny, bobbing silhouette.
I thrill to see it,
but the bird is not why I am here.
I have no list to check.
I don’t know why I am here.
Except that it feels good
to walk in the woods
amongst hemlock and beech
and wild cherry and to hear
the stories about how it is.
How the barberry came
and never left. How the
Henslow’s Sparrow ushers
in the summers here, tsi-lick, tsi-lick,
tsi-lick. How the male toads,
when they’re ready to mate,
will grip onto your finger
and not let go. How quietly
someone might walk into your life
and change the landscape,
another invisible road.
Columbus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratitude, magnolia, ohio, poem, poetry on April 18, 2013| 1 Comment »
Beside the highway,
magnolias bloom.
Mile after mile of pink
and white cups catching light,
and beneath each tree
a trail of fallen
pink and white petals,
as if the world
is preparing a wedding aisle
for anyone who shows up
this April day in Ohio.
At an intersection,
the young man
in the old blue Ford
twists his face and
scowls at our car.
There has been
no infraction, but
he throws up his hand
in what, disgust?
before his friend,
the driver, peels off.
Though he’s made it
into this poem,
it’s more from curiosity
than injury.
It is easy to not
take to heart his curled lip, his sneer.
But these petals,
these miles and miles
of trees alight
I take them very personally.
Two Meanwhiles
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apricot blossom, blossoms, freeze, haiku, orchard, peach blossom, poem on April 17, 2013| 3 Comments »
turning black
all those apricot blooms
I am not thinking of
*
almost pink—
the orchard not the only place
about to bloom
Two of Many Practices
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, Non doing, poem, poetry, spiritual path on April 15, 2013| 1 Comment »
(with thanks to Barry Spacks for the fine title)
practice 1:
Do nothing. At the moment
you feel your shoulder
pull back to strike the child
who has just hit his sister
and made her cry. In the next
moment, let the next plan rise.
practice 2:
Let the day know more
than you. Say it is raining.
Say there is a tree. Though it does
not keep you dry, there is a swing
hidden in the branches within reach.
Swing. Though you are drenched,
my god, it is fine to swing.
Through the Hourglass
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, loss, love, ocean, poem, poetry, value on April 14, 2013| 1 Comment »
It disappears, the shell,
just as you reach to pick
it up. The wave, indifferent
to value, draws it in.
The shell is more precious then.
Because it is gone.
Like when a dear one dies. It doesn’t matter
if it were a surprise or something
expected. Suddenly, the last time
we saw them alive—maybe
holding a peach or sitting
in a chair—it doesn’t matter
how simple the moment was,
we replay it with a golden hue,
as if every second of listening
to bird songs or talking
about the day’s events
were precious. Remember the scent?
Remember the light as it fell just so?
Remember how normal it was.
As the normal is precious—
sitting under a tree, or walking
the beach choosing stones,
or washing dishes, making the bed,
or eating oatmeal with blueberries,
or answering the phone to hear
the other person say hello.
How easy, how impossible
to reach now for what never can be held.
For a moment we think we have it,
but our hands come up with only sand
and what’s left of the tide running
through the our fingers.
At the Reef Beyond Tunnel Beach
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged discomfort, edge, hawaii, learning, poem, poetry, snorkeling on April 13, 2013| 1 Comment »
The edge is not so far out as I think.
See—it is shallow. The red and green fish
with thick purple lips tug on the coral reef.
I float between their feast and the terrible air,
battered by waves, surprisingly still, then kick,
feather my arms, flutter kick, and oh! The bottom
of the sea drops from so close that I think I will scrape
my knees to so deep I cannot see through the blue
to the bottom. I lift my head and note
that the shore is not so far away, but my god,
I think, I’m in deep. At the edge: Pink heads
of coral. A long, white fish with a long white nose. Black
spotted fish poking through the holes. And all that
bottomless blue. My body must look
like a floating exclamation point, but my mind is all
question mark. Am I safe? Is this real? How deep does it go?
What else lives here? What more can I see? Everything seems
worth noticing. I swim the edge as long as I dare.
Tell myself I must go in, there are children waiting there.
But part of me says, You’re are scared. I’m just learning
to wave, learning to deep, learning to tide,
learning to breathe at the edge where the tug
goes in all directions, even these places
where the light will never reach.
In Moloa’a Bay with Finn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boogie boarding, kauai, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, son on April 11, 2013| 3 Comments »
In Moloa’a Bay with Finn
The secret, he says,
is patience. I fall again in love
with him exactly then,
his small blonde head bobbing
above the turquoise sea.
We are waiting for a wave
with a large enough curl
to tow us out just a bit
before hurling us toward the shore
in a wild crush of foam
on our Styrofoam boards.
I am in the mood to wait forever.
God, it feels good to feel so small.
The boy is laughing. He loves
that I love him. His eyes
never leave the horizon.