Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, prayer, spring on March 22, 2021| 3 Comments »
Today the prayer is words
I can’t yet find,
words that flit away
like spring juncos, like chickadees.
Today the prayer I wish for
is not the prayer that finds me—
less like the perfume of a fully bloomed flower
more like the dank and fusty scent of spring.
Some days when I forget how to pray,
if I listen with my whole body,
the world reminds me how what is used up, spent
is also a vessel for the holy,
as dry leaves become a nest
as bare branches hold the sunrise.
Posted in Uncategorized on March 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Seduced by the Present: The Poetic Art of Showing Up
I hope you will join me on Thursday, 5-6 Mountain Time, for a program I’ll lead for One Spirit Learning Alliance, a fabulous interfaith and interspiritual education organization located in New York. The zoom program has a suggested donation of $10, but you can also come for free if that is too much right now.
I’ll be sharing poems and talking about the transformative practice of writing poems, how it helps us fall more deeply in love with the world and connects us to each other, to the natural world, to the divine and to ourselves.
For more information, click here.
Here is what the organization’s founder and spiritual director, Rev. Diane Berke, wrote about the program:
“Since the lockdown began in March 2020, I learned that immersing myself in beauty – through music, dance, visual imagery, and poetry – was like oxygen for my soul.
One of the true blessings of that time for me was discovering that one of my favorite poets, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, had an ongoing practice of writing one poem a day and that through her blog, ahundredfallingveils.com, she shared a poem daily with her readers. Every morning since then, I have started my day with one of Rosemerry’s poems and journeyed with her through the whole gamut of human experience – laughter, tears, discouragement, love, inspiration, gratitude, fear, and being nurtured and taught by this beautiful earth. I also began sharing Rosemerry’s poems with the One Spirit office staff in our weekly virtual meetings, and the staff quickly fell in love with her, her poetic sensibilities, her insight and wisdom, her humor and vulnerability and authenticity.
After sharing her poems in several of our Gatherings, I realized what a gift it would be to share her with the whole One Spirit community … and I’m thrilled that she will be joining us for our Gathering on Thursday, March 25th!!! (BTW, our entire office staff is over the moon excited to get to meet her in virtual person!)
Our theme for the evening will be Seduced by the Present: The Poetic Art of Showing Up, and Rosemerry will share poems and stories about the transformative impact of her daily writing practice and invite us to explore how poetry and writing can become open invitations to explore our relationships with ourselves, the earth, each other, and the divine.
I feel blessed to be able to share with my community this beautiful artist whose work has been such a blessing to me. I hope you will join us for an evening of deep soul nourishment.
Blessings and love,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, work on March 21, 2021| Leave a Comment »
for Kayleen
rolling up my sleeves
in this grand beauty parlor—
help wanted
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, fear, friendship, poetry, wall on March 20, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Not by writing another poem
about how much you miss them.
No matter how many red-wing blackbirds
you put in it, the poem itself won’t trill.
No matter how many elephants
clomp through the stanzas,
the poem won’t make the earth tremble.
No matter your skill with language
even the ripest metaphoric blood oranges
cannot quench a very real thirst.
Pick up the phone. Press the button.
Call the one you miss.
I know, I skipped the hours
where you worry about how much time
has passed, how every silent day
becomes another thick brick
in a taciturn wall between you.
Perhaps you’ve started to believe it’s impassable.
But a call is like a wrecking ball.
One sincere hello knocks down even a thousand
days of separation with just two syllables.
What happens next will only happen next
if you clear a space for reunion,
if you pick up the phone.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, memory, review, taos on March 19, 2021| 2 Comments »
for AOI
Unforgettable nights! The sun was committed
to great service, shining low and golden.
Impressive wide variety of laughter,
and the high-quality conversation
made me as if I belonged in my skin.
I don’t remember a thing I ate
or where I stayed or even much of what
we said. Mostly, I remember
walking the large selection
of quiet side streets, grinning,
feeling lucky to be alive,
and you whistling flawless and clear.
Atmosphere: Usually I’d say five stars,
but truly there were at least
two thousand stars visible,
and I’d use them all for this memory review
in which I first met you.
Only complaint, the weekend ran out of time.
Highly recommended to remember again,
especially the way our smiles slipped
from something we practiced
to something immeasurably true.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, death, life, red wing blackbird, spring on March 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »
on the way to the graveyard
taking a few detours through spring—
trill of red wing blackbirds
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bouquet, flowers, gratefulness, gratitude, love, thank you on March 17, 2021| 2 Comments »
I want to bring to the doorstep of your heart
a giant bouquet of soft-petalled words,
a lavish bouquet of gratitudes
grown from seed in which each bloom
remembers each time
I watered it, encouraged it,
pulled the weeds from around its stem.
I want to have amended the soil
in which these appreciations grew
with the mycelium of devotion,
the dark compost of love.
It matters, the ways we say thank you.
Those two words disappear from the air
in less than a second,
so is it any wonder, when you
with your love have changed me forever,
that I want to bring you
a whole garden of gratefulnesses
no, a whole field of eternal thank yous
in which every flower is astonishingly open
and the perfume fills
every room in your heart.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, mouse, thougts on March 16, 2021| 10 Comments »
Today fear is a mouse
that scuttles between thoughts
and feeds on whatever it finds—
nibbles on my certainties,
gnaws the coating off my circuitries,
and pulls the stuffing
out of each moment.
Those are its droppings
in the hallways
of my mind.
I thought it was worse
when fear was a tiger,
a badger, a wolverine,
but the mouse of fear
finds its way into everything,
makes nests inside my minutes,
discovers passages into my inner walls,
then scratches against them at night.
It never goes near the traps I’ve set,
no, it scampers around them,
its soft feet pattering,
its small dark eyes
noting everywhere I go.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, communion, ear, hearing, heart, love on March 15, 2021| 4 Comments »
I slipped my ear
into your pocket
close to your heart.
It wanted to be near
the steady thump
of those chambers,
a rhythm more reassuring
than any lullaby.
My ear likes it there
against your chest,
likes the warm hum
of your voice floating
over it, your words
indistinct through the cloth.
Forgive this eavesdropping
on the pulse of you,
but it is the only news
that interests my ear today
while the rest of me
works far away.
Yes, the only thing
my ear wants to hear
is the red song of you
like a faithful drum beating
here, here, here.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mistake, pie, pumpkin pie, second chance on March 15, 2021| 2 Comments »
Twelve minutes after I put
the pumpkin pie in the oven
I saw the two brown eggs
still sitting on the counter.
There are times it’s not too late—
when we still might see the loved one
if we go now,
still might catch that plane
if we just keep running,
still might save that friendship
if we pick up the phone
still might stave disappointment
if we pull that pie from the oven,
pour out soupy filling back in the bowl,
blend in the eggs.
How rich it tastes, that second chance
infused as it is with the risk of loss,
served perhaps with whipped cream,
the custard so sweet, so spicy.