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Archive for January, 2020

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Come play! January 22 in Telluride, Colorado, at the Ah Haa School

A drawing and poetry class with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Meredith Nemirov

Everyone has a “cherished object,” perhaps one from childhood that elicits memories from times past, or perhaps something more recently purchased that brings joy and pleasure. In this class, we’ll explore them and see what they have to teach us. It’s part of a long tradition: Poets write odes—consider that famous Grecian urn or Pablo Neruda’s socks. And artists practice the still life—Giorgio Morandi spent a lifetime painting one group of vases!

For a day, give yourself over to the inner magic of things (“no ideas but in things” said William Carlos Williams). Join poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and artist Meredith Nemirov to explore the objects of your world.

Bring a couple of objects you like. Bring any drawing tools you enjoy working with—pens, pencils, charcoal, etc. Bring a sketch book about 11” x 15.” Class will break for an hour for lunch.

 

January 22, Ah Haa School, Tellruide, CO

10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

$150

to register, visit Ah Haa or call 970-728-3886.

 

 

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You are not a passive observer in the cosmos. The entire universe is expressing itself through you at this very minute.

—Deepak Chopra

 

 

Even as she made the cauliflower soup,

she was a deep space explorer.

No one else in the room seemed to notice

 

she was floating. No one noticed

how gravity had no hold on her.

No, they only saw she was chopping onions,

 

noticed how the act made her cry. How was it

did they not hear her laughter, astonished

as she was by her own weightlessness,

 

by the way she could move in any direction?

Perhaps the novelty explains why

she forgot to turn off the stove,

 

untethered as she was to anything.

It’s a miracle she sat at the dinner table at all,

what, with the awareness that she was surrounded

 

by planets, spiral galaxies, black holes, moons. Yes,

miracle, she thought as she tasted the soup,

and noticed deep space not just around,

 

but inside her: supernovae, constellations,

interstellar dust,

the glorious, immeasurable dark.

 

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Out of Reach

 

 

The crystal vase on the top shelf,

the one that holds two dozen roses.

The Hallelujah Chorus’s high A.

The perfect word that flutters away.

The name of the man walking toward you.

The card that slips between the seats.

The itch on your back. The dream upon waking.

World peace. Inner peace. Any peace.

 

In the kitchen, a persimmon

with its stubborn glossy skin. A knife

with its shrewd steel edge. Oh this art

of choosing to want what’s in hand—

sweet honeyed flesh, yielding and soft.

Oh this craving for blood oranges, tart and red.

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Dave drips the hot blue wax onto the ski

and tells me how it will help the ski meet the snow.

“The cold snow is sharp,” he says, “and aggressive.”

Today’s wax will harden the base of the ski.

 

I think of the world and all its sharpnesses,

all its aggressions. We humans

are not so unlike the snow. I’ve been fooled

so often. Perhaps my soul needs blue wax.

 

No, I think, what the soul really needs

is more like the scraper he pulls out,

and the brushes of copper, horsehair, and nylon.

What the soul really needs is a scouring.

 

He explains that the scouring allows

the cuts in the structure to be exposed

so that the skis don’t suction to the snow.

Is that what all these little cuts are for in me?

 

To keep me from getting stuck? Later,

as I skate in the race and feel my ski glide

across what is cold, I thank Dave

with my visible breath.

 

There are so many ways to relearn

how it is we meet the world. Today,

the lesson is a ski, a scraper, some wax,

a man with an iron, and acres and acres of snow.

 

 

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The Vendor

 

 

And if there were a map

for the path of my own becoming,

I wouldn’t buy it.

I tried. I marched up to the vendor

of maps, took out my coin,

and held it out for the exchange,

but was startled by an inner revolt—

not an angry crowd but a quiet, insistent no.

I put the coin back in my pocket

and walked away, wildly aware

I had no idea what step came next.

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Even then she was becoming

a dreamer, a lover of bark,

a student of solitude. Even then

she noticed how there were places

and moods that words couldn’t touch—

even then she felt the joy in trying anyway.

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Invitation

 

 

 

The day dares me to become a tree,

dares me to root, to stay in one place,

to choose this here, to plant myself in this now,

to stretch down even as I reach up.

 

But there are gusts in me, and wild squalls,

whirling impulses that swirl and spin

and whisper to me to be current, be flow.

Winds in me that says go, darling, go.

 

And the day says stay to me. The day

says, find evergreen in the moment.

The day offers me its ground, its generous soil.

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A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it.

            —Wikipedia

 

 

Perhaps black hole is just another word

for God—a force that pulls in everything,

regardless of how that everything looks or prays or votes.

A cup that runneth—not over, but ever in. A shepherd

so adept at shepherding that nothing—

no sheep, no man, no star, no dust—

could ever be lost in its spacetime pasture.

It creates communion, obliterates separateness.

In pictures, it’s a vision of still water.

In truth, it’s unable to be known.

A force that overwhelms all other forces.

It devours some, and in others spurs growth.

 

And what isn’t, I suppose, another word

for God: Ledger. Valley. Garden. Death.

Rhubarb. Rod. Human. Staff.

There is this gift to see the divine in everything.

There is this force that pulls the everything in.

Every particle. Every everything. Even (my god) the light.

 

 

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Darn Lucky

 

 

 

It happens, you know—the day opens itself

like a tulip in a warm room, and you meet someone

who amazes you with their willingness

to be a thousand percent alive, someone

who makes you feel grateful to be you.

 

And it’s as if life has been keeping a beautiful

secret from you—like the fact that they make

elderberry flowers into wine. Like muscadine.

Like the yellow-green floral scent of quince.

Like the perfect knot for tying your shoes.

 

And it turns out life does have wonderful

secrets waiting for you. Even when the news

makes you cry. Even when some old pain returns,

that’s when you will meet this new friend.

Someone wholly themselves. Someone

 

who makes you smile in the kitchen, a smile so real

that when you go out, the whole world notices.

It’s enough to make you want to wake up in the morning.

To go into the day. To be unguarded as a tulip, petals

falling open. You never know who you might meet.

 

 

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red sky at night

I am thrilled to be selected as the winner of this year’s Halcyon Poetry Prize, which means that my new collection, Hush, will be published by the wonderful Middle Creek Press, perhaps as early as this spring. The contest advertised for “literature of human ecology, eco-poetry, nature-poetry, spiritual rather than religious, works based in our humanity, conscious, mindful, deep. We look for works which show connection between people and nature, people and people, people and their stories, dreams, and sacred moments, whether wild or domestic.” It’s a quiet book–a book deeply steeped in nature. And Craig Childs, adventurer and writer, is writing the introduction.  Oh! I’ll keep you in touch!

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I want to be quiet enough

to absorb the shouting,

still enough to subsume

the uproar, silent enough

to diminish the din. I want

to calm not just the air

but the hurt that drives

the shouts, calm the hurt

that drives the hurt.

Like bringing an ocean

to put out a candle—that’s

how bizarrely effective

I want this quiet to be—

the kind of quiet that touches

everything, tenderly,

like Persian perfume, and

invites it to feel how sweet

the communion of silence.

I want to know quiet

like a fine silken blanket

big enough to cover us all. Quiet,

like a bottle of wine that no matter

how much we pour and share

we find it miraculously always full.

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Unresolved

 

 

 

The hero in me

wants only a happy ending,

but tonight at the concert

every song I loved best

ended in a minor key

that lingered in the air

like a half formed rainbow,

like the scent of soil

after a punishing rain.

 

How do I teach that hero

to love the dissonance,

to settle into the discord

to shed her raincoat

and stand in the mess

and say ahhhhh?

 

 

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Big

This is, perhaps, the year to learn to be big.

Spruce tree big. Cliffside big. Big as mesa,

as mountain lake. Big as in cosmos, as in love.

Being small has never served me—constricting,

contorting, trying to fit into a room, into shoes,

into a name. Let this be the year to escape all those little

rules with those little shoulds, all those little

cages with their little locks. Time to make of myself

a key, time to lean into immensity. Time to supersize

communion, time to grow beyond self. Time to

open, to unwall, to do as the universe does,

accelerating as it expands, not rushing toward

something else, but changing the scale of space itself.

This is the year to be big .

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I am thrilled to have a poem again on Gratefulness.org, a site devoted to generosity of spirit and gratitude. This poem explores how gratitude brings us into wholeness and connection:

https://gratefulness.org/resource/translation/

 

 

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the room so bare

where just hours ago

there was light—

 

remembering now

how to celebrate emptiness

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For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.

—T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

 

 

So let me speak this year in leaf,

and let me speak in stem.

Give me photosynthetic nouns

and algal interjections.

Let my syntax be made of phloem,

let my phonemes be blades of grass.

May all my conjunctions produce oxygen

may my prepositions be moss.

And let me mostly listen

with ears attuned to soil and root

And when I have words, let them be living,

may only the kindest words bear fruit.

 

 

 

 

 

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One Old Lang Syne

 

 

midnight comes—

a sweet quiet fills the house

wherever you hear it, we share it

 

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