In a book,
in the fridge,
in your eyes,
at the edge,
at the altar,
in the sky,
on the mountain,
in the night,
in a song,
in a kiss,
with a
therapist,
in the sea,
on a shelf—
always
outside
of myself.
Archive for January, 2015
Places I’ve Looked for Meaning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inner wisdom, meaning, poem, poetry, seeking on January 31, 2015| 4 Comments »
Didn’t Even Bother to Turn Off the Ignition
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anticipation, poem, poetry, stop sign, traffic on January 30, 2015| 5 Comments »
While I sit fully stopped
at the white line
my thoughts rev and race
around the next four corners
and before my foot
even pressures the accelerator,
those thoughts are already walking
with a little lilt and a whistle
right through your front door.
What Matters
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, identity, poem, poetry on January 29, 2015| 3 Comments »
in empty branches
the red-wing blackbirds
chirrup and trill—
is she a woman who is listening to them
if so, she has, for now at least, forgotten
yet another note to self
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, crow, expectation, hawk, poem, poetry on January 27, 2015| 3 Comments »
funny how much more beautiful it was
when I thought it was a hawk riding the air,
that crow
A Fabulous Poetry & Painting Retreat for Women!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ah Haa School for the Arts, Brucie Holler, poem, poetry, poetry class, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on January 26, 2015| 3 Comments »
Hi Poetry Friends,
I will be teaching a very special four-day workshop for women the last week of February. My partner, Brucie Holler, is an incredible painter, and she and I have created a program designed to help you play, to break through any limitations you place on your own creativity, and to really grow as an artist/poet and woman. No previous writing or painting experience is necessary … and experts welcome, too! We are ready to welcome all women into a big conversation about what it means to be a woman, what it is to have a voice, to be a creator, a maker of beauty and a demolisher of walls …
Join us in Telluride! here’s the link:
http://www.ahhaa.org/calendarize/going-going-five-day-art-writing-retreat-women/
Not Wanting to Leave Anything Out in My List of Gratitudes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged evolution, gratitude, poem, poetry on January 26, 2015| 4 Comments »
Just think of all that had to happen
so I could sit on the porch
this clear winter day and feel the warm sun
on my naked shoulders—bacteria
were engulfed by eukaryotic cells,
and after over a billion years,
multicellular organisms evolved
in the oceans before an explosion
of Cambrian life—sponges, brown
algae and slime molds. And then,
of course, the colonization of land
by the plants and fungi, followed
by arthropods and insects.
Some 500 million years later,
my mother and father met on a date,
set up by friends, and my dad, a biology major,
brought Coke instead of beer, which impressed
my mother, a history major, and they sat
and drank it together, seated on a picnic blanket
which they laid out on grass so green, so new
one could almost wring the saltwater out of it.
When I Am Brave I Can Honestly Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, love, parenting, poem, poetry on January 24, 2015| 3 Comments »
Oh child, I hope you fail.
I hope you break the thing you believe is most precious
and learn that in its absence, you are still whole.
I hope you lose the love you thought you must have
and find that love inside you that can never be lost.
I hope you are eaten alive by the lie that you tell
and decide that is no way to live.
I hope everything you think you know about yourself crumbles
so completely it can never be rebuilt.
And I hope I have the strength to let you fail,
to fail myself, to meet you in this vulnerable field
where there are no accomplishments worth noting,
no titles, no names, no should, no stories,
only two hearts here for the loving.
A Woman Addresses Her Body
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body image, gratitude, poem, poetry, woman on January 23, 2015| 8 Comments »
Oh body, I’ve tried to silence you.
I have told you not to hunger
when you were starved.
I told you to run and ski and swim
when you were tired.
I tugged you long into the dark corridors of night
when you wanted to sleep.
I draped you in dresses two times too big
to hide your angled bones.
And you, you have lured me to the waterfall
to stand beneath the startling shock.
You have lain me down in tall grass
to lose myself staring up at sky.
You have curled into the softness of men
and held the fear of children.
Inside panic, you have found breath.
You have opened to let the new life pass through,
and given milk and song and hum.
And when the tears want to come,
you let them come.
Body, my vessel, my carriage, my curse,
my blessings, my bane, my teacher,
I am still learning how to be a woman.
On a January Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged distance, illusion, love, poem, poetry, separation on January 22, 2015| 3 Comments »
less than the width
of my thumb, the distance between
Venus and the moon—
and you, in arm’s reach,
light years away
Oh, Don’t You Want to Shake Her, to Maker Her Want to Listen?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, ignorance, illness, poem, poetry on January 21, 2015| 5 Comments »
You cannot always tell by looking
what is happening. On the outside,
she is smiling, apparently flourishing.
Inside, there is a terrible secret
even she does not yet know. There
was a whisper of it, but she found it easy
to listen instead to the geese with their
raucous arrival, or to listen to the song
of the river pushing through the ice.
Okay, some part of her knows it,
but she is not yet ready to admit anything.
She is perhaps like the tree riddled on the inside
with beetles. At first glance, it looks like nothing more
than a few little holes, but under the bark
there are girdling tunnels. It will be a long time
before she will hear the soft chorus
of dry needles falling. By then,
it will be impossible not to notice
that something is very, very wrong.
By then it will be much too late.
I Felt So Safe There
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, poem, poetry, treasure on January 19, 2015| 4 Comments »
Beneath the stairs in the unfinished room
was a space just large enough
for a girl age six to crawl inside and hide.
I’d tack up a thin pink blanket to dampen any light
and crouch in the dim with my dolls, my pillow.
There was a hole in the concrete block
that I scraped and smoothed, with what?
I can’t recall. The hole was small, but it was sufficient
for holding my finest treasures: a round blue bead,
an arrowhead, a wedge of weeping willow bark
that worms had carved with squiggle marks.
Had I known then what I know now, I would have also
tucked in there a tiny scrap of paper with your name on it.
Turn, Turn, Turn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, poem, poetry, worry on January 19, 2015| 2 Comments »
At six, my daughter doesn’t know
her visit to the oral surgeon tomorrow
is a hardship. She is thrilled about losing
three teeth in a day, just think
what the tooth fairy might bring!
She twirls around the room and hums
a tune that only she knows. I do not tell her
how much it might hurt. I tell myself
it may not be so bad, that children
heal faster. Just last week, she was bit
by the cat and already the wound
has disappeared. I tell myself it is better
this way, the not knowing.
I try to imagine not knowing
how much it hurts when the ones
we love are in pain. I want to save her
in ways I can’t save myself—save her
from the sting of worry. Tomorrow
is nowhere here. For now, there is
this song spiraling out, there is
this spinning, laughing girl, there is
this heart breaking before its time,
this longing to hold something
that can never be held.
Poem Not Really About Melting Snow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anticipation, poem, poetry, snow on January 18, 2015| 2 Comments »
between the drips
of melting snow the waiting
for the next drip
Instead of Just Basking in Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, love, moon, poem, poetry, projection on January 17, 2015| 3 Comments »
Just before
it disappears
it’s ten times
brighter,
the moon—
oh love
is it any wonder
our shine
sometimes
frightens me?
Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged colic, love, mothering, poem, poetry on January 16, 2015| 6 Comments »
Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky.
—Chippewa, translated by Robert Bly
You have to love your baby.
I didn’t. Not the mornings
he woke, the wails already trembling
on his tiny rose lips. Not the twisting
and stiffening of his perfectly
muscled limbs. Not his face staining red
as he screamed in my arms.
Not the hours, not the days, not the
weeks nor months of bouncing
and rocking and swaying and swaddling.
I wanted to make it stop. I wanted
a different child, one that would
giggle and babble and gurgle and coo
and smile. It was only after I lost
my every hope and forgot my
last expectation that love came in
with its strong lungs and ferocious will
and it’s broken dreams, it arrived
looking only like the child I held,
not at all like the child I thought I wanted.
Ice on the Water And
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, love, paradox, poem, poetry on January 15, 2015| 2 Comments »
ten below
and yet it unfurls so greenly
this new leaf of love
Sometimes I Forget
Posted in Uncategorized on January 14, 2015| 2 Comments »
even now, even now,
even now, even now, even now
even now, bow
Where Is There To Go?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged accomplishments, poem, poetry, ship on January 13, 2015| 2 Comments »
you the mast, the sail
the wind, the sea itself—
you the hole in the hull