It is late morning
before the sun rises
over these red cliffs,
Golden halos blaze
behind the evergreens.
What luck on winter solstice
to watch the sun rise twice—
like getting to fall in love
two times with the same lover.
May the sunrise always remind me
to fall in love again with the world.
Every morning may I know the choice
to open the heart and see myself
as the world.
Archive for December, 2020
Skiing By the River
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, solstice, sunrise on December 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Solstice Surrender
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, solstice, surrender, trojan horse on December 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The night is a poem
with verbs of shadow
and nouns of deep,
a poem I never tire
of reading, a poem
that writes itself
into my thoughts,
enters my imagination
like a Trojan Horse—
when its dark ink
overcomes me,
you’d almost think
I was happy
for the ambush,
you’d almost think
I flung wide the gates
on purpose
knowing full well
how the story
would end.
Instructions for Perseverance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, chickadee, perseverance on December 19, 2020| 5 Comments »
Think less: Trust your inner animal.
—Holiday Mathis, Horoscopes by Holiday, December 19, 2020
It’s the chickadee
that saves me today.
Though the world
gets cold, the chickadee
stays. Despite snow.
Despite frost. Despite
lack of sun,
it doesn’t leave
the winter land.
Oh, tough little bird
who sticks around,
who thrives
in any weather—
whose cheerful tune
spirals like hope
through the frigid
folds of December
as if to say let it come.
I can sing through
anything.
Let it come.
Heart-Opening Solstice Event
Posted in Uncategorized on December 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Monday, December 21, 5 p.m. MST
An online gathering featuring Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, James Crews & Phyllis Cole-Dai
Tickets: $15 or Pay What You Can (purchase here)
Want to come but can’t make it? Everyone with a ticket will also get a link to a recording of the event, so you may enjoy the event at your leisure.
Pause with Rosemerry, James and Phyllis around an imaginary fire to mark the shortest day of the year. Through stories, poems, and music we’ll reflect together on this transition between seasons and celebrate the darkness and the coming of the light. The evening will leave you with a renewed sense of purposes and belonging, ready for whatever challenges lie ahead.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer co-hosts “Emerging Form” (a podcast on creative process), “Stubborn Praise” (an online poetry reading series with James Crews) and “Secret Agents of Change” (a surreptitious kindness cabal). Her poetry has appeared in O Magazine and Poetry of Presence, on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS Newshour, and her daily poetry blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. Her most recent collection, Hush, won the Halcyon Prize.
James Crews is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird and Every Waking Moment. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, The New Republic, New York Times Magazine, and The Sun, among other journals. He is also the editor of the anthologies, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, forthcoming in April 2021. He lives with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont and hosts the bi-monthly show, “Stubborn Praise,” with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.
Phyllis Cole-Dai began pecking away on an old manual typewriter in childhood and never stopped. She uses the arts to help heal the divides within our spirits and our communities. She has authored or edited 10 books in multiple genres, including historical fiction, memoir, and poetry. Her latest is For the Sake of One We Love and Are Losing: A Meditative Poem & Journal, a special edition available only on her website (Bell Sound Books, 2020).
After a Graduate School Reunion on Zoom, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged education, freedom, friendship, lake on December 18, 2020| 2 Comments »
for Jennifer and Jennifer
And once again I am twenty-four
and I walk out the door
of our master’s exam and meet
my classmates down by the lake
and the day is hot and we drink cold beer
until we think jumping off the end
of the pier is a great idea, so
we kick off our shoes and run fully dressed
to the edge and launch and splash
and swim until we arrive at a party barge
full of men who pull us dripping
and life-giddy into their midst
and we do shots of something
that blissfully burns before laughing we
return to the open lake and side stroke back
to the shore where nothing’s the same
as it was before, though it still looks the same—
metal chairs still orange, our hair still brown,
the humid sky hazy, loud cheers all around—
but our lives will soon hurl us
in different directions—
to lovers and children and unanswerable
questions where the real tests cannot
be studied for with friends, and life’s master’s
degree doesn’t end till life ends, but oh,
for those few moments on the terrace,
soaking and shivering and whooping in glee,
my god, we were free, we were free, we were free.
Why I Stay Up Late
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, mystery, night on December 17, 2020| 2 Comments »
So gently the darkness
curls around the world,
first dusky, then dim,
then lushly black—
so generous, the way
it thickly spreads
the softest of songs
until silence silks
the empty streets
and velvets the vacant rooms—
even this riotous heart
inclines toward quietude
and whatever part of me
that knows something yawns
and the part of me
who falls in love
with mystery
leans more easily
into the ever-unknown
and I meet the starry
grand embrace,
speck that I am,
and marvel
at my insignificance,
marvel at how enormous
it is, this openness,
this gratitude.
On Discovering I’ve Grown
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beaver, growth, personal growth, tree on December 15, 2020| 2 Comments »
It’s not forever.
When we fence a tree
down by the river,
some slender tree
that a beaver could easily
gnaw through, the fence
only stays up until the trunk
grows big and thick,
wide enough to discourage
any who would try take it down.
Just today, I realized I’d built a fence
around me. Noticed it
only because, while routinely
clearing out,
I dismantled the fence
and took it away.
How invisible a wall can be.
What amazed me:
how enormous I’ve become—
vigorous, robust,
sturdy enough not to worry
about little bites.
I remember how, not so long ago,
I was so vulnerable.
You could hug me now,
now that the fence is gone,
though your arms wouldn’t quite reach
all the way around.
Perhaps that’s as it should be.
Part of me belongs to you.
Part of me is still growing
into the world.
Making Breakfast with Dolly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, Dolly Parton, kitchen, shoes on December 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Tonight I read
that Dolly Parton
always wears
high heel shoes
in her kitchen.
“Don’t you?”
she asks.
I don’t.
I wear old brown
wool slippers.
With orthotics.
I try to imagine myself
strutting into the kitchen
before the kids
go to school,
making smoothies
and scrambled eggs
in my yoga pants,
my long gray sweatshirt,
and my four-inch
lucite stilettos.
Click, click, click
go the heels
as I teeter toward
the tea cups.
Click, click, click
as I strut
with paper towels
to the place
where the cat
has retched.
Oh Dolly,
as I slip into
these high-heeled thoughts
I thank you
for dressing up the day.
They two-step
through the morning chores,
while meanwhile
my slippered self
marvels at the fun,
but shrugs—
she’s just so darn grateful
for her arch support,
for the rubber soles
that ground her
as she sweeps
up the crumbs,
as she wipes
the counters clean.
Grateful that when
the high heeled thoughts
start to sing,
they invite her
to sing along.
Ode to Lighting the Candle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged advent, candle, Christmas, flame, ode on December 14, 2020| 6 Comments »
Tonight when we light
the third candle,
the candle of joy,
I remember
I am a girl
sitting beside
an evergreen wreath,
giddy with advent,
and I breathe in the scent
of spruce and wax
and fall in love
with the growing
of the light—
how each week
the tapers burn brighter—
and such a surprise
to find I am also
in love with the unlit candle,
in love with the wait,
in love with the part
of me that even
in darkness
knows itself
as flame.