after Issa
common as morning
this love and yet
and yet
Archive for August, 2020
One Marvel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, miracle, morning on August 6, 2020| 6 Comments »
One Endless Supply
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, memories on August 4, 2020| 2 Comments »
Tonight Is a Torn Map
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inner journey, map, not knowing, sitting still on August 3, 2020| 2 Comments »
Tonight is a torn map
and the woman
is a would-be voyager.
Once, she believed
there was a path.
Now, she believes
there are many.
Sitting still
beside the river,
she notices
the urge to rise,
notices when
the urge has passed.
Notices it rise again.
Being still
is one of the hardest
paths of all.
All around her
the world is moving—
gurgling, waving,
weaving, crawling,
climbing, winging, falling,
eroding. And in her,
more movement
than she dares to admit—
not just mudslides,
tectonic shifts—
every day the landscapes
change. Every day
the inner map she drew
looks less like what’s
really there.
It was no mistake
when it ripped.
Find this poem published in the amazing ONE ART POETRY
Stubborn Praise: Featuring Alison Luterman, Aug. 10
Posted in Uncategorized on August 3, 2020| 2 Comments »
Stubborn Praise:
An evening celebrating here and now through poetry
with hosts Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and James Crews
and special guest
Alison Luterman
August 10, 5 pm (PDT), 6 p.m (MDT), 7 p.m. (CDT), 8 p.m (EDT)
Free, but you need to register for this webinar here: Zoom
Every second Monday of the month, 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. Though unlimited people may register, space is limited to 100, so be sure to show up on time!
This month’s guest is Alison Luterman, celebrating her newest collection of poems, In the Time of Great Fires, which won the Catamaran Poetry Prize.
Her previous books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly; Desire Zoo. Her poems and stories have appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Salon, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, The Atlanta Review, Tattoo Highway, and elsewhere. She has written an e-book of personal essays, Feral City, half a dozen plays, a song cycle We Are Not Afraid of the Dark, as well as two musicals, The Chain and The Shyest Witch.
Alison performs with the Oakland-based improvisation troupe Wing It! and has given writing workshops all over the country, including at Omega and Esalen Institutes. She teaches memoir at The Writing Salon in Berkeley, and is available for private coaching in writing or creativity, both in-person or on-line.
This free event is hosted by SHYFT at Mile High, whose mission is to provide all people, regardless of ability to pay, with classes and programs proven to reduce stress, heal trauma, and create connection.
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.
It Just Might Happen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, love, strangers on August 2, 2020| 10 Comments »
Everywhere I go, I find them—
people who bring love to the world.
Reading the headlines,
I sometimes think love is dead
and humans are brutes
and we may as well all give up.
But every time I leave home,
I meet pedestrians who wave
and women who give understanding nods,
and men who offer to pay when the person
in front of them is short a few bucks.
People hold doors for each other with a smile
and I’ve seen folks pick up trash
off the sidewalk and go out of their way
to not step on a beetle or a worm.
My friend Wayne says,
We have to love the world
to want to save it,
and sometimes, I think
it just might happen—
though every day unspeakable cruelty
happens on these same streets.
Oh this world.
Even as I feel my guard go up,
I see strangers chatting on the corner
as they wait for the bus,
notice how their laughter
threads through the noise of the day
like a song, like a kite.
Cardiac Library
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged books, heart, library on August 1, 2020| 1 Comment »
In the library of my heart
are thousands of slim volumes.
There are no rules
against dog earring pages.
Writing in margins
is encouraged.
There are many comfy chairs,
sage and amethyst rugs,
and surprisingly tall ceilings
with ladders for reaching
the highest shelves.
Dust never collects here,
the cream candles never burn out,
though sometimes
a chapter or two is lost
and no one notices.
It smells of vanilla
and lavender and old paper.
It smells of autumns
and moonlight and loss.
Is it any wonder
I sometimes go days
without leaving here?
But sometimes,
though I have in my hand
the key to get in,
I just can’t find the door.