I know it’s just another square
on the calendar, another tick on a clock
in the Royal Observatory in London,
but tonight feels like a good time
to forgive myself—for thinking
I know anything. For wishing for life
to be any different than it is. For
blaming anyone or anything.
For every time I have turned away
from helping someone else. Tonight
is the right time to touch the darkness
and feel how small I am, to expose
my fear for the future, my pain
of the past, and let all be flooded
by the shimmer of present mystery.
Tonight is the time to nourish
the pericardium of the world,
to take care of the one great heart
that beats in us all and trust
that our kindness matters always—
not in a conceptual way, but
in the very specific way we say hello,
the way we hold out our hand,
how we shape our words,
where we give of our time, and
how we open or wall off our thoughts.
I light a candle tonight, as every night,
and invoke my beloveds here and not here.
And though it’s a small act,
it unfastens some lock in me
and says yes, this is more
than a date, more than a timetable.
This is an essential point
on the continuum of love.
This is a chance to bring light.
Archive for December, 2021
December 31
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, new year's eve, time on December 31, 2021| 9 Comments »
The Invitation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, invitation, love, reframe, story on December 31, 2021| 15 Comments »
Two nights after he died,
all night I heard the same
one-line story on repeat:
I am the woman whose son
took his life. The words
felt full of self-pity,
filled me with hopelessness, doom.
And then a voice came,
a woman’s voice, just before dawn,
and it gave me a new shade of truth:
I am the woman who learns
how to love him now that he’s gone.
It did not change the facts,
but it changed everything
about how I met the facts.
Over a hundred days later,
I am still learning what it means
to love him—how love is
an ocean, a wildfire, a crumb;
how commitment to love changes me,
changes everyone,
invites us to bring our best.
Love is wine, is trampoline,
is an infinite song with a chorus
in which I am sung.
I am the woman who learns
how to love him now that he’s gone.
May I always be learning how to love—
like a cave. Like a rough-legged hawk.
Like a sun.
A Prayer for Imagination
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boundaries, horizon, imagination on December 30, 2021| 9 Comments »
The effort of the imagination is to turn the boundary into a horizon because there is no end point for you. The boundary says, Here and no further. The horizon says, Welcome.
—Barry Lopez, Horizons (short film by Jeremy Seifert)
There are so many boundaries in me,
so many limitations, prisons,
places where a line has been drawn—
perhaps by another, perhaps by me.
The lines say, Stop.
The lines say, Don’t be curious.
They say, Make yourself small. Now smaller.
But imagination is the big pink eraser
that rubs out the lines,
smears and disappears them.
Sometimes, it’s more like a tear—
a small rip in the known
that bids me look through the lines
as if peeking through a curtain.
And sometimes the imagination
takes a line and bends it, twists it
like a clown with a balloon,
until what I thought was a boundary
becomes bird, becomes crown, becomes
flower. Or it turns the line perpendicular
so what I thought was a deadline
becomes path. I want to listen
for the voices beyond the boundaries,
want to open to what I can’t yet see.
I want to hear the welcome of the horizon
and, like a bell calling me home, let it lead me.
In Those Quiet Hours
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mother, night, reframe, sleep, son on December 29, 2021| 26 Comments »
For two weeks after he died,
I’d fall asleep exhausted
only to wake just past midnight.
Desperate, I’d claw at sleep,
frantic to catch it and clutch it,
but always it slipped my grasp
and I’d lie awake till morning.
My friend suggested
I reframe those sleepless hours
as a sacred time, an intimate,
personal quiet time. Not a problem.
Not something to be treated.
Not something to be feared.
That night, as I emerged from sleep,
dreams dripping from me like water,
I did not resist the waking.
Instead, eyes closed, heart open,
still lying in bed, I said,
I love you, Finn. I miss you, sweetheart.
And woke on the shore of morning.
Ever since, it happens just like this—
when I slip from sleep,
I tell my son I love him
and slide unknowingly
back into the tide of dreams.
How many hundreds of times
when he was young, did I go to him
when he cried out in the night?
I’d press my palms against his chest
until his breath was a skiff for dreams.
Years later, though I can’t feel his hands,
though I don’t hear the lullaby of his breath,
somehow he arrives to comfort me.
And though I don’t hear him say
the words I’d always say to him,
I feel them float above me like a blanket,
warm in the cool night air—
Shhh. I’m here. It’s okay. I’m here.
Four Upcoming Classes and a Time Capsule
Posted in Uncategorized on December 29, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Hi friends, if you are interested in reading poems together, exploring your own poetic voice, and joining a community of other people curious about poetry and connection, I hope you will join me for one or more of these upcoming opportunities!
Wonderment and the Art of Being Alive: A poetic invitation
Wednesday nights, January 5-26
online, hosted by the incredible One Spirit Learning Alliance.
For more information, a video about what we will learn, and to register, visit here
Soul Writers Circle: A Mindfulness and Writing Community
Sunday afternoons once a month, January 30- June 26, only two spaces left
online, co-taught with the incredible Augusta Kantra
For more information and to register (scroll to the bottom of the page), click here
Beyond Cup & Bowl: Writing to Explore the Human Vessel
Monday morning, January 10, 2 hours
online, hosted by Wilkinson Public Library
For more information, or to register, visit here
For Telluride locals, an in person class will be held January 13, 5-7 p.m. at the library.
The Mystery of Grief: Writing into the Loss
Tuesday afternoons, Feb. 15-March 15
online, hosted by SHYFT at Mile High
for more information or to register, visit here (scroll down till you find it in the class offerings)
Also, I was invited to create a Time Capsule of 2021 by the curator of The Alipore Post, an international online journal of art, poetry, music and collaboration. You can see my response in photographs and poetry here. I loved looking at the other artists’ Time Capsule’s too–a great look into what’s happening around the world.
Baking a Cake for Timothée Chalamet’s Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cake, celebrate, daughter, kitchen, mother, Timothee Chalamet on December 28, 2021| 6 Comments »
It doesn’t come out well.
The blue icing is constellated
with dark chocolate crumbs.
And the icing itself, well,
the mixer broke last week,
so we stirred it by hand
and it’s lumpy.
But we did it, my daughter
and I, we made the cake
and frosted it and she even wrote
in lopsided white frosting cursive
Happy Birthday Timothée Hal C.
And neither of us cares
that the cake isn’t beautiful.
I don’t even like cake.
But I like baking in the kitchen
with my daughter, and I am eager
to celebrate just about anything right now—
morning, a bird at the feeder,
a clean window, feet, carrots, heck,
even the wonder of dish soap, and sure,
the birthday of the goofy
and beautiful Timothée Chalamet—
let’s have a party. Let’s bake a cake.
Let’s sing a song we all know
and light some candles.
Let’s make lavish wishes.
And if there isn’t sweetness
to be found, let’s make it.
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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer970-729-1838 wordwoman.com
Watch my TEDx talk The Art of Changing Metaphors: TEDX Rosemerry Trommer
Today I Realize
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, grief, phone, time lapse, voice on December 27, 2021| 12 Comments »
I can still call your phone
and hear your voice mail.
And so I do, I call it,
and the low tones
of your familiar voice
reach all the way in
and squeeze my lungs.
This is you know who.
We are you know where.
Leave your you know what
you know when.
I hang up at the beep,
and then I’m gasping,
choking, making sounds
I don’t recognize.
And then the house is quiet.
The ache is like a time lapse
of a rose in bloom—
first clenched, then
opening and opening
and impossibly opening,
then fading, then dropping away.
Every day a new bouquet
of ways I miss you.
Today, I miss the deep
song of your voice
how it opens in me
fragrant, like home.
*
this poem has been published in ONE ART
Learning from the Robins
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, Christmas, community, flock, robin, survival on December 26, 2021| 6 Comments »
It’s Christmas and the yard,
grassy again from unseasonal rain,
is abloom with dozens of robins—
robins flitting and bobbing
and weaving unpredictable paths
with their dark gray wings.
They seem harbingers
of an unexpected spring,
as if life is asking them to be more alive
just when it seems as if
everything is dead.
How could I be more alive?
I love that these birds know
how to survive—love that
come winter, they flock.
Because more eyes means
more chances to spot food.
Because more eyes means
fewer chances to become food themselves.
I, too, have been flocking
this winter—surrounding myself
with other eyes, other hearts,
other wings, other minds.
It feels good to be one of many,
to trust my kind. It feels good
to fly together for this
tenderest time. The truth is,
it isn’t easy. The truth is,
we were made for this.
On Christmas Eve
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, friendship, jar, magic, vessel on December 25, 2021| 8 Comments »
On the doorsill,
left without a knock,
was a very small bag
with a big silver bow.
Inside was a jam jar
with a red gingham cap
filled with homemade confetti,
Its thin red label said:
Christmas magic,
just sprinkle.
And it’s that simple:
a bit of bright paper
cut into tiny squares
and the true love of a friend,
and I am awash with magic,
baptized by tears of devotion
and wonder, marvel
and memory, loss
and hope and gratitude.
Let the jars we are
be vessels for love.
May we be certain
that whatever we carry inside us,
we are capable of real magic—
the kind that flings open
the heart of another
and lets wild joy rush in.
The kind that turns words
into wine. The kind
that takes a gray rainy day
stained with grief and sickness
and turns it into
Christmas.