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.
Posted in Uncategorized on May 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
An evening celebrating new books of poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, James Crews and Danusha Laméris
Friday, May 29, 5 pm (EDT), 6 p.m (MDT), 7 p.m. (CDT), 8 p.m (EDT)
Invite yourself to an evening of poetry that wholly meets the moment, its losses and fears, and helps us also to see small kindnesses, stubborn blessings, and renegade beauty. After the readings will be conversation harvested from questions and comments in Zoom chat.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Hush, Middle Creek Publishing (available for pre-order)
James Crews, Bluebird, Green Writer’s Press
Danusha Laméris, Bonfire Opera, University of Pittsburgh Press
*
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BfRfnWWkQqe417F_QPQPiw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.
*
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Placerville, Colorado, on the banks of the San Miguel River. She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate and as Western Slope Poet Laureate. She teaches poetry for addiction recovery programs, hospice, mindfulness retreats, scientists, women’s retreats, teachers and private students. She believes in the power of practice and has been writing a poem a day since 2006. She has 12 collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in O Magazine and on A Prairie Home Companion. Her most recent collection, Hush, won the Halcyon Prize, and Naked for Tea, was a finalist for the Able Music Book Award. She is the co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process, and co-founder of Secret Agents of Change, a group devoted to surreptitious acts of kindness. One-word mantra: Adjust
James Crews’ work has appeared in Ploughshares, Raleigh Review, Crab Orchard Review and The New Republic, as well as on Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in Writing & Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The author of three collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays (Prairie Schooner Prize and Foreword Book of the Year Citation, 2011), Telling My Father (Cowles Prize, 2017), and Bluebird, Crews is also editor of Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection. He leads Mindfulness & Writing workshops and retreats throughout the country and works as a writing coach with groups and individuals. He lives with his husband, Brad Peacock, in Shaftsbury, Vermont.
Danusha Lamérisis the author of The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her poems have been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The SUN Magazine, Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, and Ploughshares. Her second book is Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press), and she is the 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She teaches poetry independently, and is the current Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing things to be, prayer, surrender on May 20, 2020| 4 Comments »
inspired by a conversation with Craig Childs
Let it come, says the voice,
a voice not quite mine,
and somehow more my voice
than any other.
Let it come.
And by let, it means,
Open your hands,
And by it, it means
Anything.
And by come, it means,
You be still. Enough running,
enough fighting, enough
pushing away.
Meet the world that’s here.
I close my eyes,
and an invisible cage lifts.
Let it come, says the voice,
and I move my lips with it
until the prayer
is my own.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged improvisation, music, singing, song, sound, spontaneity on May 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »
All day the world improvises
a song for me—song of bickering robins
and whispering grass, bright chime
of a text and gravel trucks that grumble
on the highway as they pass.
The song I would sing for you, let it be
as spontaneous as the chattering
of the cat watching hummingbirds,
as sharp as the flap of the flag in the wind.
Let me not sing the same song I’ve sung before.
This is the time to sing it new, to sing
the song we didn’t know we were brave enough
to sing. This is the time to sing
the most honest song, thorn song,
green song, yelp of relentless shine.
This is the time to sing as if our lives
depend on it, sing the song
that comes out of attending.
Song of pushing through dirt.
Song we don’t know yet.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broccoli, hail, resilience on May 18, 2020| 8 Comments »
Today I talk to the broccoli sprouts.
I kneel down beside their bed.
You can do it, I tell them.
I don’t mention that every summer
there is a hail storm that will
puncture and tear their leaves,
that bits of their green will litter the soil.
Though the sprouts are less
than half an inch tall,
the leaves already look tough—
like thick four leaf clover.
The hail, though, will be tougher.
Perhaps I don’t want
to tell myself how tough things will get.
Would rather encourage. Would rather play.
Would rather revel in the day’s sun.
But today, there’s no lying to the self—
the inner hail has already come;
my leaves hang in tatters.
All around me, flower petals
are fallen, scattered.
Out of season, widespread wreckage.
There is an inner knowing, though—
one that needs no one else
to encourage it. It knows to grow,
to grow despite the damage, to grow,
because damage. To grow. It knows
to grow, because that is what we are here to do,
our new leaves coming in to support the old,
to support the whole, every bit as vulnerable,
and green, so green.
Posted in Uncategorized on May 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Sometimes we feel as if someone else really gets us–that’s how I felt listening to this interview I did with Laura Joyce Davis on her podcast Shelter in Place. I’m episode 50–that means she’s made 50 podcasts since the Shelter in Place order began mid-March 2020 exploring what it means to find sanity in a world that feels increasingly insane. With her usual aplomb and sensitivity, she interviews me about daily practice, about how the pandemic changes things, about how a poem saved my life, and about why I love meeting people who think they don’t like poems.
To listen, subscribe to Shelter In Place wherever you usually listen to podcasts or listen on your computer or phone right here.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, love, meadow, summer on May 17, 2020| 2 Comments »
A big green meadow
opened in my heart
filled with dark purple larkspur
and fragrant sage—
and I stepped into it,
wondering how I had ever
stepped out of it—
come, meet me here,
here in the temple
of pulse and blue sky,
where everything
seems possible,
even love forever,
even love right now.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged stone, water on May 16, 2020| 4 Comments »
Oh my dear Rosemerry, let’s remember how water is always moving & shining.
—Sandra Dorr, private correspondence
And so though I am stone,
stuck and dull,
can’t move or shine,
I think of how a rock will skip
when it is round and flat,
how stone turns skiff
when thrown with spin
and speed and slant—
one flick of a wrist and I
can bounce, can hop,
can dap and for a brief time,
shine.
Oh life, pick me up,
give me a toss,
low and quick.
I’ll sink, but first
I’ll fly.
*readers–this poem has a little secret. can you tell what it is??
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged holding, sun, tea on May 15, 2020| 2 Comments »
the way the hand holds the mug,
the way the mug holds the tea,
the way the tea holds the leaves,
the way the leaves hold the sun,
the way the sun holds everything
the way everything eventually
lets go.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged worry on May 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »
in my stomach
only two butterflies
but oh how they flutter
not finding
anywhere to land