Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bells, interdependence, poem, poetry on June 21, 2016| 3 Comments »
Here is the heart
asking the bells to be quiet
so that it might hear
its own beating.
Here is the blind man
who climbs the mountain
by listening to the song of bells
worn by the guide in front of him.
The path is getting steeper.
Oh heart, there’s no reason
to pretend you’re alone.
We’re all wearing bells
for each other. We all
need a song to follow.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, poem, poetry, thoughts, weed on June 20, 2016| 1 Comment »
Pulling tall grass
from amidst the peonies
it’s hard not to admire
the tenaciousness
of grass, admire it
as I rip it out, every
last blade.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, fishing, otolith, poem, poetry on June 19, 2016| 6 Comments »
The days lasted for years back then.
Summer was a lifetime.
He took me out on the lake in our boat
and when we had reached the deeper waters
he’d cut the motor and we’d set the anchor.
The waves made blue conversation with the hull.
There were weeds, I am sure. There always were,
in green profusion floating along the surface.
We would have dug for earthworms that morning
beneath a weed pile in the shade
of the weeping willow.
Now he pulled them out of the can
and guided my hands to string their thick,
pink bodies along the hooks.
We cast and sat. Perhaps we talked.
The red and white bobbers translated
what might be happening below.
We pulled up bluegills, crappies, sunfish,
and perch and threw the larger ones into the bucket
of lake water we used to keep them alive until supper.
Then I caught a drum, and my father’s eyes
glittered like sun on the swells. He pulled
out his knife and carved into the fish
just above the gills.
From the flesh, from the blood, from the death
he withdrew two flat white stone-like things—
otoliths, he said. They were strangely polished,
smooth and shiny, like pearls, like ivory.
He dropped them into my hand. I received them
as treasure, pronouncing the strange word
over and over. Otoliths. Otoliths.
I did not yet know that beautiful things
don’t last.
I held them in my hand the whole ride home.
They are gone, decades ago. What remains
is what I choose to remember—
the scent of the lake rising up. The
slapping of the waves. The diamonds
in my father’s eyes when he realized
he could share with me a secret
about beauty and its hiding places.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ah Haa School for the Arts, Brucie Holler, poetry retreat, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on June 18, 2016| 2 Comments »
Step out of your everyday life and into yourself.
Join me and painter Brucie Holler for four days in Telluride, Colorado in a creative retreat for women at the Ah Haa School for the Arts, July 25-28.
Here. A chance to step out of the rush of your life and dedicate time to your creative, playful, wise and unfolding self. What memories, stories, images and patterns might appear?
For more information, click here
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, poem, poetry, wrong turn on June 18, 2016| 1 Comment »
I make a right turn
toward a life twenty five years ago—
where did this field
of wild iris come from?
On the radio, someone
is singing, “I am the one
who’s not anymore.”
I begin to notice
I don’t know where I am.
There are no signs
for where I want to go.
I am as much the road
as the one driving it,
the field of wild iris,
the voice on the radio,
the right turn itself.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poetry interview, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on June 17, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Hi Poetry Friends,
This Sunday at noon Eastern Time, if you get a chance, listen in on a conversation I had in Taos a couple weeks ago with poet and provocateur James Navé … it will be playing on Interview with Rosemerry at WPVMFM … we talk about poetry, poets, writing, love, light, dark, process …
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged invitation, mountains, poem, poetry on June 17, 2016| 1 Comment »
Meet me in summer
when the mountains
are softened by fields
of blue lupine
and the creeks run clear
with the memory of snow.
With any luck,
we’ll get lost until
we, too, begin to bloom,
until whatever is cold in us
melts and races away
with a bright and bubbling laugh.
There are days we forget
how to make a fist,
how to speak any language
but praise. Meet me
in summer when the old
high trails are open—
what else might we find
behind the crumbling
mines—some share
of ourselves we’ve yet
to have met—something
so spacious we never
dreamt it would fit
inside our skin.
With any luck,
it will follow us home.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, news, poem, poetry on June 15, 2016| 3 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amazement, erik satie, piano, poem, poetry on June 14, 2016| 3 Comments »
Thank you for the Gnossienne No.2,
and for the directions
you wrote above the staves.
“With amazement,” you wrote,
at the start of the piece.
That is what I told my hands
as they bumbled tonight
through the melody.
Thank you for the melody.
Just today I saw
with amazement the four plover eggs
still intact in the nest,
though I could tell
by the wet silt around them
that the high water
had covered them.
My friend said she thought
they might not hatch.
I watched as the mother plover
ran at the river’s edge,
pretending she had a broken wing,
attempting to distract us.
“I think they will hatch,”
I said, though the words were said more
out of longing than belief.
Sometimes longing
is all we have.
“Don’t leave,”
you wrote in the score.
That’s what I thought
later today when
I saw the lonesome
duckling in the pond—
no mother, no father,
no other baby ducks.
I longed to be a mother duck,
to know what a baby duck
might need.
As it is, I gave it space,
knowing sometimes
giving space
is the most generous thing
we can do.
I do not want space.
Tonight I saw a picture
of my friend with her newborn girl,
both of them naked,
skin to skin. That
is what I want.
“With great kindness,”
you say, and that
is the way I want to live
this song of life—
in amazement and with
great kindness—to know
myself as the kind of melody
that might be played
poorly and still sound
beautiful because
the hands that played me
did it “lightly, with intimacy,”
though the keys keep changing
though the timing is unmarked,
though the song doesn’t end
anywhere near where it begins.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, Regret on June 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »
a naked bougainvillea
surrounded by pink petals
on the ground—
this fear that we could have
tried harder