Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, fire, light, marcus aurelius, poem, poetry on September 30, 2018| 3 Comments »
A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.
—Marcus Aurelius
Let me be fire.
Let everything
ignite me.
Let the whole world
be kindling.
I’ll take all fuel.
Let me flash.
Let me flare.
Let me make brightness.
Give me the dark.
Let me blaze there.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgetting, memory, poem, poetry, song, traveler on September 30, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Once I knew it by heart,
that song about leaving
the earth and traveling on,
but tonight, I just hum
through the verse I’ve forgotten,
grateful the tune still knows
how to find me, grateful
to still have lips, breath.
Grateful to be a traveler
here, my feet still finding
the road.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nature, personal responsibility, poem, poetry on September 29, 2018| 4 Comments »
When my shoulders feel too slight
to carry injustice and my arms
reach too short to hold the world
and my bones are too weak
to carry even a single aching heart,
I walk amongst the aspen and the spruce
and notice how the light shines through
the changing leaves—such radiance,
such golden shine—and slowly
the rational part of me that believes
in doom is forced to fade.
It’s not so simple, of course,
as walking out into the forest.
But there is something there
that grows the soul and breeds
a sense of possibility and tells
the aching heart to rise up, rise up
and do the work that must be done,
rise up and carry with it the light.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amor fati, garden, poem, poetry on September 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »
And the next day,
the flowers are dead.
It always happens this way—
the zinnias go from orange
and gold and pink to fragile gray.
And the cosmos are slender
skeletons of bloom
that blazed only yesterday.
The nasturtiums resemble
drooping weeds from the sea.
The marigold leaves have blackened.
It always happens this way.
And the world goes on.
And the world goes on
with its cyclical necessities.
I pull roots from the ground
and breathe the rich and sour scent
of summer spent and autumn
chill triumphant, and fall
in love with the empty rows,
this is the way, the way it goes.
And it’s beautiful, this absence.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corinne Platt, dream workshop, poetry workshop, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, uncertainty on September 27, 2018| 2 Comments »
Placerville, CO, Sunday, October 28th 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., $100
How often do you wake up from a dream and wonder, “What was that?”
What if you discovered that your subconscious has the answers you are seeking? Each night, through dreams we are offered pieces of ourselves that we might never come to know. For many of us, we have learned to not just dismiss our dreams but our deeper emotional and spiritual worlds as well.
In this workshop, we will explore the landscape of dreams and write poems that float between dream and reality, the irrational and the authentic, certainty and uncertainty. Through dreams and poetry, we will open up to the uncertainty in each of our lives—the continual, miraculous unfolding of not knowing.
No previous experience with dream work or poetry necessary. Led by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Corinne Platt.
To register, contact Rosemerry, 970-729-1838 or wordwoman@rosemerry.com
or
Corinne, 970- 596-5221 or corinneplatt@earthlink.net
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, poem, poetry, sky on September 26, 2018| 2 Comments »
I imagine writing a one-line poem
long enough to reach you—
imagine how the words might quiver
in the wind, how I might climb
their serifs like a thin-runged ladder
and follow the words
to you like breadcrumbs,
like footprints, like hope.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, poem, poetry, quiet on September 26, 2018| 4 Comments »
Though I have hours of work to do
I lie beside him until I feel
the quiet do what quiet does,
the fight and fuss leave his muscles,
and the growl and gruff leave my sighs
until we are at last two breaths
beside each other, soft and tender,
two hearts in the dark
with their walls down.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged field, lost, path, perspective, poem, poetry on September 24, 2018| Leave a Comment »
lost in this meadow
deep in the grass
so easy to think
there is no path—
ask the mice
ask the stars
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bells, meditation, poem, poetry on September 24, 2018| 2 Comments »
Suddenly everything is bell.
The bright clang of the spoon
stirring in the metal pot.
The scraping black note of crow.
Creak in the porch board
as I step into shadow.
Horn of a passing car.
What isn’t a call to attention?
Horse whinny. Airplane hum.
Dishwasher whirr. What
isn’t a bell to wake us up,
remind us to bring our attention
here. Whisper of leaves.
Squeak of the door hinge.
The small sigh escaping our lips.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bus, fear, poem, poetry, worry on September 24, 2018| Leave a Comment »
And then, as I was walking the dirt road,
it hit me like a school bus: people
might not like me. I felt the rush of air before
the bumper connected with my butt, and knew
in that moment I could choose to be flattened or
choose to somehow crawl into that bus
and ride along with the jeers and snarls and sneers.
Okay, I said, as I clawed my way around the yellow fender
to the open door, a stowaway on my fear.
I climbed the green stairs and felt their stares:
icy, cruel, fierce. Others indifferent, bored.
I stared back, prepared to feel small.
Hello, I said, waiting for shame. But
that’s not what I felt at all. Instead,
some seed of awareness that I was not splattered
by fear but alive, and now moving in one direction
with this busload of what frightened me so,
And I was not flattened nor crushed nor bruised.
I took my seat. Felt their eyes on my back.
And the bus kept driving along. When it stopped,
I stepped off, surprisingly whole.