Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, drought, rain on May 31, 2020| Leave a Comment »
At last, the rain,
a furious rain,
that turned into
tiny fists of hail,
shredding leaves
and pummeling
everything it met,
it rained as if
one day, charged
with intensity,
might change
a hundred days
of drought—
and, oh, the world after,
bruised and shining, still thirsty.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged equality, growth, love, sorrow, sunflower on May 31, 2020| 3 Comments »
Sorrow is how we learn to love.
—Rita Mae Brown, Riding Shotgun
If sorrow is how we learn to love,
then let us learn.
Already enough sorrow’s been sown
for whole continents to erupt
into astonishing tenderness.
Let us learn. Let compassion grow rampant,
like sunflowers along the highway.
Let each act of kindness replant itself
into acres and acres of widespread devotion.
Let us choose love as if our lives depend on it.
The sorrow is great. Let us learn to love greater—
riotous love, expansive love,
love so rooted, so common
we almost forget
the world could look any other way.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, summer, the moment on May 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »
for Danny, Wendy & Art
The breeze was warm
and the day was hot
and the shade on the porch
was generous.
It was nothing magic.
It was total magic—
each moment, each word
a spell.
We spoke of news
and poetry, we spoke
of healing and loss.
It was forgettable.
I will never forget it—
the hush of our voices,
the currents of laughter
that wound around
the trees and the willows,
surrounding us like moat.
How could we predict the moments
that shape us the most?
The dogs lying at our feet.
The summer just starting
to burn.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, friendship, relationships, story on May 28, 2020| 4 Comments »
Because you are the porch,
I am the rocking chair.
Because you are the pen,
I am the unfinished poem.
In the conversation of what happens next,
I am always the pause.
I am always the pause
and you the verb.
And if there should be a run on sentence
that jogged right through the
end of the story, way past the end,
well, I would not be the period.
But I would be ever after.
And I would be the one still listening after that.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, essence, growth, larkspur, rebirth, wildflower on May 27, 2020| 2 Comments »
Flourish
Whatever it is inside the larkspur
that says grow, grow, grow,
I want to know it, too. Want
to obey the voice that urges me on,
even in frost, even in rain.
I want to rise out of my own dried debris,
want to know how it is to die and return,
new and yet somehow the same.
And what is it that fuels the drive?
I want to know that— the divine
encouragement that knows
when to wait, when to push,
when to wilt, when to flourish,
when to swell into oh! bright bloom.
I want to know myself as wick,
to be lit, to be the fire itself.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, Heartbeat, joy, music, singing, tears on May 26, 2020| 4 Comments »
Perhaps we stumbled
on the words, perhaps
we forgot a note,
forgot a bridge,
bumbled our entrances,
fumbled our parts,
but we sang, oh yes,
we sang into the low golden light
of summer, sang
because joy, because
harmony, sang because
lonely, because fear,
sang because, tears
spilling down our cheeks,
we could sing, oh friends,
before we said goodbye,
we could sing.
Posted in Uncategorized on May 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Dear Friends,
A second section of The Practical Poet (a five-week writing workshop for poets of all levels) has opened on Wednesdays (June 3-July 1).
Mondays are full, so be sure to click on the link that says to register for Wednesday!
The more we understand how poetry works, the more playful we can be in our practice.
In this five-week writing workshop, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer offers strategies to help you wrestle more intimately, more proficiently with language. By increasing your knowledge of poetry’s hows, you can better serve your poems as they emerge.
Topics will be:
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poems have appeared in O Magazine, TEDx, Rattle.com, in back alleys, on A Prairie Home Companion and on river rocks she leaves around town. She’s taught and performed poetry for Deepak Chopra, Think 360, Craig Hospital, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Weehawken Arts, Camp Coca Cola, meditation retreats, addiction recovery programs, hospice, universities, libraries, scientists and more. She’s won the Fischer Prize, Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, the Dwell Press Solstice Prize, the Writer’s Studio Literary Contest, and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. She served as Colorado’s Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process. She earned her MA in English Language & Linguistics at UW-Madison. Since 2006, she’s written a poem a day. One word-mantra: Adjust.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, camping, haiku on May 25, 2020| 2 Comments »
making up songs
as I set up the tent—
or a song making up me?
*
beside the lake
rowing the memory
of a blue boat
*
bald eagle dives into the lake
then rises quickly
in its beak, a heavy poem
*
sitting with a blade of grass
until it reads me a story—
once upon this morning
*
laughter in darkness—
this, too,
a kind of campfire
*
hiking through ponderosa
a subplot wonders
if it could become the main story
*
cold, clear night—
spiking my tea
with Cassiopeia
*
third morning camping—
waking up in a chapter
written before this one
Posted in Uncategorized on May 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Hi Friends,
I hope you can join me for two upcoming classes, The Practical Poet–a five-week writing class five Mondays in June, 1-3 p.m. MDT, and Poetry of Presence, a five-week poetry discussion series five Tuesdays in June, 3-5 p.m. MDT
The Practical Poet: Attending to Craft
The more we understand how poetry works, the more playful we can be in our practice. In this five-week writing workshop (June 1-29), Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer offers strategies to help you wrestle more intimately, more proficiently with language. By increasing your knowledge of poetry’s hows, you can better serve your poems as they emerge. Topics will be:
The Muscle of Metaphor
What’s in a Line?
The Joys of a Cage: Playing with Form
The Delight’s in the Details
The End: Ways a Poem Might Finish
Register Here.
Poetry of Presence: A Five-Week Discussion Class
For five weeks (June 2-30), we’ll immerse ourselves in mindfulness poems from the recently published collection Poetry of Presence (Grayson Books, 2017). Poets in the collection include Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab Nye, Wendell Berry, Li-Young Lee, Raymond Carver, Ellen Bass, Lucille Clifton, Octavio Paz, Nikki Giovanni, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, Billy Collins, Charles Bukowski, Marge Piercy, and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. As the editors say, these are poems that “inspire us to live better, and to make our world better; at the same time, they grant us a taste of being good enough, just as we are, in this world, just as it is.”
Each week, we’ll read and discuss these writings that, according to Fr. Richard Rohr, invite us to live undefended, poems that lead us into a deeper communion with the world.
Participants will need to purchase a book prior to the class, available for $21.95 online at poetryofpresencebook.com, through your local bookseller, or through Amazon.
Register Here.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, helping, husband, son on May 22, 2020| 6 Comments »
While I heat curried asparagus soup,
my husband and son cover garden beds
with thick gray blankets.
I watch them from the kitchen window,
my son now taller than his dad.
How quickly he bolted, bolts still.
I think of the ways
we try to protect what we grow.
The threat of frost is real.
Like the bean sprout that didn’t make it last night,
despite the fact we covered it.
This morning it was waxy, shriveled, dark.
How quickly it died.
But because my husband made row covers,
everything else survived.
I would like to make a row cover
for my son, for the world—something
to protect against what is harshest, most cold.
Instead, I mix lemon juice, yogurt
and chives that we’ll swirl into the soup.
I can fortify him on the inside.
My husband tacks down the cloths
with hammer and nails—I think
of all that will be saved tonight.
We are charged to take care
of each other, the world. Impossible charge.
My son catches my eye and smiles.