There is a room inside me—
a room the shape of love.
A room the shape of laughter.
A room the shape of tears.
It is furnished with softest blankets,
and there is country music playing,
and sometimes cello, and sometimes
the Canadian national anthem,
and sometimes it is quiet.
There is sweet tea and chai tea and
popcorn with butter and yeast and salt
and candles and bonsai trees that thrive.
We built this room together—
built it the same way we built sandcastles
on the beach in the Caribbean, the same way
we built tractors and front loaders
out of cardboard and straws and brads,
the same way we built an intimacy
out of breakfasts and trundling rocks
and looking for dinosaur bones.
Though you are gone, the room
is with me everywhere I am,
and I enter it whenever I need
to rest in the space of you here and not here:
here as I write this poem,
not here as I set the table,
here between holding on and letting go,
not here when I turn around,
here between heartache and healing,
here between forever and now.
Archive for February, 2022
Between When You Were Here and You Are Not
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, in between spaces, liminality, room on February 27, 2022| 6 Comments »
Strange Communion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dissolution, grief on February 27, 2022| 8 Comments »
Today I am suspended
in the clear winter air, hovering
above the field—no wings,
no strings. I float here,
as if I am air, unboundaried,
as if everything moves right through me—
song, sorrow, beauty, light, hope—
nothing sticks, nothing lingers,
and then, as if all it took
was for me to notice it’s possible,
I expand out in all directions—
into the startling blue and into the generous earth,
across the valley and beyond the plateau,
and it keeps going, this glorious, dissolution of self.
How is it I am free today,
unable to be weighted, uncontainable?
Is it because of you, grief?
Is it because you
have broken me open so competely
I can no longer pretend
I am not spacious,
can no longer believe I am separate from the whole?
Anti-Lamentation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, grief, music, piano, record player on February 26, 2022| 11 Comments »
There was that summer
when my record player broke,
the needle always returning
to the first song and playing
the whole record again and again,
through morning, through midnight,
and so George Winston’s Winter into Spring
played all through my summer.
Soft and pensive, each melodic phrase
hung spare in the air as if inviting
revelation or breath
before burbling forward like snowmelt.
How I loved that summer,
every moment of it kissed
with chords shattered into arpeggios,
silences and grace notes.
Sometimes breaking brings a gift
we didn’t know we needed,
the way a broken record player
steeped me for months
in the grace of a melancholic beauty
and made the haunting familiar.
The way a broken heart can bring up
a record of beautiful memories,
one after another, day after day,
and somehow heal us by making a masterpiece
of the wreckage.
News of the War
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, ice, news, ukraine, war, winter on February 25, 2022| 7 Comments »
The newscaster speaks
and beneath you
the floor becomes ice
and the world
is speeding
on balding tires
and the moment
is the highway
and all is fishtail
and the brakes
are useless now—
and the cliff so close
and you brace
against nothing
and the only way
to correct a slide
is to turn
into the slide—
Meeting Some Truths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avalance, loss, truth, winter on February 24, 2022| 8 Comments »
The truth was an avalanche—
an avalanche midsummer,
which is to say
it didn’t seem possible,
but it happened.
And I was buried
beneath the cold
immense weight of it.
Crushed but still breathing—
another impossible truth.
I know some would like to see
the uprooted world
already green and lush again,
but anyone who
has wandered through
old avalanche paths
knows it takes many seasons
before the fallen old growth trees
have moldered into soil,
many seasons before the new saplings
have grown into forest again.
One truth is, the healing begins quickly,
but takes a long time.
Even then, the forest is never the same.
One truth is, so much of transformation
happens beneath perception.
One truth is, we all live
in the avalanche path.
Four Poems Published in ONE ART
Posted in Uncategorized on February 22, 2022| 5 Comments »
Grief, love, and gratitude. That’s the essence of the last six months, the essence of these four poems published today in ONE ART–the first poems I’ve sent out about meeting the loss of my son. Thank you to Mark Danowsky for publishing them on this Twosday (2/22/22), a day that Finn would have celebrated. Poetry has been a saving grace–reading it, writing it, talking about it. Thank you to all of you who read these poems here–you get the first drafts, and I thank you for that. Only one of these poems changed substantively–for those of you who are noticing such things.
For all who love, for all who have lost or will lose a loved one, I hope these poems find resonance. We are not yet done with our loving.
You can find them here on the fabulous ONE ART site.
Journey of Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged advice, brain, grief, impermanence, Joi Sharp, journey, love, path, wisdom on February 22, 2022| 6 Comments »
with thanks to Joi Sharp
When my teacher told me
Everything we love can
and will be taken from us,
I did not know how she
was preparing in me
a synaptic path.
I understood her words
in the way one understands a journey
by reading a map.
Now, ten years later, with every breath
I travel this path of loss
as so many others have before me,
and yet there is no trail, no signposts,
no destination, and the path changes direction
from moment to moment.
But the path does not feel foreign.
Every turn of it is paved with truth—
Everything we love can and will be taken from us.
Those words now offer
the strange comfort of prophecy
as I wander these trails of impermanence,
stunned with gratitude even as I weep,
alive with loving what doesn’t last,
astonished by the enormity of love—
how love is the red thread that pulls us through,
not a thread to follow,
but a guide that never, ever leaves the path.
The Mystery of Grief: A writing time on Feb. 26
Posted in Uncategorized on February 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »
you meet this grief every moment.
You find inner doors you never knew were there
…You would never ask for this, and yet
and you swing them open, not to rid yourself
of the ache, but to grant it full access,
to know the grief completely,
to let it rewrite you, remake you, rebirth you,
to let it teach you what it means
be alive.
-From “Condition” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Dear Friends,
What lies on the other side of the gates of grief?
The great spiritual and poetic traditions of the world affirm that there are profound gifts of compassion, courage and communion waiting to be gathered.On Saturday, February 26, let me be your guide through the valley of shadows in exploring the alchemical process of Writing Our Way Through Grief. Together, let us be myrrhbearers: bringing the balm of beauty born from a courageous willingness to say yes to the whole of the heart, and out of that, creating a healing circle for all who follow us.
It’s a sliding scale–from nothing to $80. I hope you will join me and the amazing Kayleen Asbo, founder and curator of Mythica Foundation, in this journey toward our common humanity.
The Softening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, grief, mother, softening, son on February 21, 2022| 9 Comments »
I carry it with me now, everywhere I go,
this softness, this limp unstuffed toy, a puppy
with a thin square body made for snuggling.
I carry it in my purse where it mingles
with my wallet, my glasses, my lipstick,
my loss. When I’m walking, I reach in
and let my fingers rub its soft, worn fleece.
When I’m watching a movie, once it’s dark,
I pull it out and let Skinny Puppy settle in my lap,
as if its brown embroidered eyes could see.
I know it’s just an object, but it’s a well-loved object,
some small proof that my boy was here,
that he loved, loved hard, loved long.
I remember how he carried Skinny to school,
clutching the small brown scrap to his belly
when we would say goodbye. I remember
how long after the toy trains and model tractors
and even the complicated Legos had gone away,
Skinny still slept on his pillow.
It’s been worn down by love, this old friend,
and made even softer by the loving—
like me, an old woman who has become
frayed, sentimental, slightly tattered,
distressed, but so shaped by love, and softened,
yes, softened. Even more myself, only softer.
Becoming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged feeling, love on February 21, 2022| 6 Comments »
The hurt you embrace becomes joy.
—Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, , trans. Coleman Barks, “Silkworms,”
To wake and not want
to change anything.
To let the heart feel
what it feels.
To be disarmed,
defenseless
and so alive.
There are days
love claims us
so utterly
we unfold
into the moment,
whatever it holds,
certain we were made for it.
Nothing has prepared us
for this.
Everything
has prepared us
for this.
Meeting Grief Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, self, truth, who am I on February 20, 2022| 8 Comments »
I was wrong, grief,
when I said you had become me,
integral as bone.
It is true you are woven
through the fibers
of every moment.
It is true, you have taken up
residence here, like a cat
that sleeps in my bed.
It is true you have brought
the most beautiful,
unwelcome gifts—
silver songs that emerge
from keening—songs that crawl
before they soar—
and an openness
I once prayed for
before I understood the cost.
But we are not knitted, grief—
not bonded, not joined.
Whatever is most essential in me
is truer than the story
you’ve been written into,
truer than page itself.
Whatever is most essential in me
longs to know you,
longs to dance naked
and unashamed with you,
but it is entirely unchanged by you.
Whatever is most essential in me
thanks you for the lessons
that keep me asking who I am.
I closed my eyes, and the light came in.
Who am I? I asked, and I watched
the story disappear from the page,
as if the ink were a murmuration.
Who am I? I ask, and the only answer
alive on my tongue
is thank you.
One Made in the Benevolent Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bee, darkness, dream, honey, paradox on February 18, 2022| 6 Comments »
from sweet nectar
and bitter pollen
all the honey
On the Coals of Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged coals, grief, heat on February 17, 2022| 10 Comments »
It’s not that the bare feet
wanted to walk on coals.
They didn’t. They wanted
to walk on a beach
where the clear water
would rush up
and cool them
whenever the ground
got too hot.
The bare feet feel heavy.
They want to sink
into the sand
and stay there.
But coals it is.
No use asking why.
The question is
how to walk the walk
they’ve been given,
because today,
getting stuck hurts.
It’s all up to you.
the coals seem to say.
If you sink in here
you will burn
so dance light,
be light.
The Dust Speaks
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, dust on February 16, 2022| 8 Comments »
I always come back.
Not out of spite. Not
to annoy you. I settle
here in your home
because I am you.
I am your sloughed off skin.
I’m your hair. I’m your cells.
I’m fibers from your clothes
mixed with bits of dead bugs
and soil and pollen and plastic.
I am the memory
of everywhere you’ve been
and I am the memory
of what you do
and I come from places
you’ll never go.
I can shine, too—
sometimes when the light is right
you see me glitter in the room
and curse me.
But child of the cosmos,
I am here to help you remember
where you came from.
And child of earth,
I am here to help you see
you are one with everything.
I am here to remind you
where you go from here.
Embodied
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, rash, skin on February 16, 2022| 7 Comments »
Oh grief, you are not like a rash—
something irritating from which
I will eventually recover.
Something that affects just the surface.
I am coming to know you as I know
my own skin—many layered. Resilient.
Something I don’t think of as separate.
Everything that touches me,
is informed by you—
whatever is sharp, soft, rough, tender.
Through you I sense it all.
Is it strange I once thought
I needed to protect myself from you?
Now you are me, integral as bone,
fundamental as blood, natural as joy.
To know you is to know myself—
to know what it is to be alive.
Once we were strangers.
Now I can’t live without you.
Neuroendocrine Prophesy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged endocrine, science, waking up on February 14, 2022| 9 Comments »
The pineal gland walks down the street.
No one notices it, of course—
so few have any idea what it is.
Not to mention it’s the size of a pea.
Though a mouth sees it
and whispers to an ear,
“I heard she secretes melatonin.”
The ear titters, as if it’s a joke.
It’s no joke. The pineal gland
ignores their chatter. Because it’s true.
And it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
“Hey, PG, don’t worry about them,”
says the open yawn walking by.
“You’re amazing. I should know.”
The pineal gland nods and sighs.
“I feel so misunderstood,”
The yawn grows wider.
“It’s no small thing what you do—
to let in light and darkness.”
The pineal gland gives a shrug.
“In fact,” says the yawn,
“thank you for letting it all in.
That’s the only way
this world will wake up.”
*
(um, yeah, I know i just totally geeked out, but hey …)
Two Truths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, death, grief, presence on February 13, 2022| 7 Comments »
after Ruth Stone, “Train Ride”
He is dead. Never again to pull on the fencing mask, moonwalk to his bedroom or snuggle on the couch. Not dancing on the stage. He is dead. Not spinning the gator through the field. Not graphing equations for fun. Is he dead? asks the heart. No, he lives on forever. In the scent of lemon. In the cloudy ice on the pond. In the buds of the lilac tree. In the song on my breath. He lives in blue sky and comet and field. He lives in ink and in spaces between. He is dead. I held his body in my arms. Since that day, he has never left me. He is alive forever.
Emerging Self-Portrait
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged helplessness, love on February 12, 2022| 9 Comments »
I know now myself as helpless—
helpless the way a rake
is helpless, helpless as knife, as needle,
as match, as pen is helpless.
I know what it is to not function,
despite potential, despite history.
I know how it is to lose all agency,
though once I could stitch,
could fix, could bring light.
I know can’t.
I know out of the question,
infeasible, undone, no-go.
Unable to speak. Unable to rise.
This was the moment when love arrived,
love with its ten thousand hands,
love with its perfect skeleton key
to enter every door of me.
Not that I asked.
Not that I deserved it.
Not that I said yes.
But love arrived on grief’s strong wings
and I, a sapped and broken thing,
began to know myself as free
dependent on a skillful hand,
began to trust as love turned me
toward what I most wished not to see,
began to feel myself as love.
Pssst–want to be a secret agent of change???
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged secret agents of change, valentine's day on February 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »
 Hello! Shhhhhh … We’re whispering a quiet hello to you, Secret Agents, It’s that time again. Are you excited? We are! Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Sherry Richert Belul invite you to participate in an oh-so-important mission on Monday February 14th, and we hope you’ll don your agent’s badge and join us. In case you are brand new to our circle, we’re a group of people who aim to spread surreptitious joy and kindness in playful and unexpected ways. One of the twists of what we do is that our missions are always based on one of Rosemerry’s poems. AND, even those these are secret missions, we do spill the (happy) beans together in our Facebook Group after the operation is complete! 💥💓💥 Valentine’s Day is one of the Hallmark holidays that can joyful and romantic, for sure. AND, it can be a hard day for people who are grieving, ill, lonely, or lost. It can be any of those things and anything in between. Rosemerry and Sherry would like to invite you to a mission in which we get to find creative (and stealthy) ways to express love — perhaps in some unexpected places. 💥💓💥 Let’s Reinvent the Valentine! Here’s how it works: Rosemerry shares a poem and Sherry offers a simple, easy-to-execute, hopefully-enjoyable prompt to send you out into the day with purpose and love — and a bit of creativity, too. There are two ways to participate in our February 14th Mission: 1. Join Live when we announce the mission! Join a live Zoom call with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Sherry on Monday morning, 2/14/22, from 8:30- 9:30am PST (9:30-10:30am MST, 10:30-11:30am CST, and 11:30-12:30pm EST) and we’ll not only share a poem and announce the mission, but we will also have some time to connect and share ideas. (Think of it like a Secret Agent Social Club!) Please join us live if you can; we’d love to see your beautiful Secret Agent faces and feel your stealthy, loving, ninja awesome agent energy while we are on live. (Or, if you prefer to join audio-only or lurking-only, those are just fine, too!) Scroll down; Zoom details are below our signature. Copy these links into your calendar now! 2. Join via Replay! We will post the prompt in our Secret Agents Facebook Group. You can participate anytime on Monday. No matter which way you participate, you’ll report back in our Facebook Group at the end of the day to let us know how your mission went. You matter! Your participation is important to us! We LOVE your stories of missions-accomplished. We love the good news feel of your reports. No matter which way you choose to participate, we love you and honor you! Gratefully your Spymasters, Rosemerry and Sherry 🔎 PS: If you have friends whom you think would enjoy these kinds of missions, or if you are not yet signed up to be a secret agent, sign up to receive the link to the zoom here: https://simplycelebrate.net/secret-agents-of-change. The more the merrier! We will notify everyone via email when the next Operation launches! Also, join our Facebook group to report back on Monday’s mission! 💕 Stay connected! 💕 If you would like to know more about Sherry, her book Say It Now, and her coaching business, Simply Celebrate, please click here: https://simplycelebrate.net/ And if you would like to know more about Rosemerry, her books, her daily poems and her creative consulting practice, please click here: https://www.wordwoman.com/  Please know that your information is safe with us. Rosemerry and Sherry would never give or sell your private information to anyone! You’re a spy, after all! Gotta keep your identity absolutely secret! —Sherry Richert Belul + Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer |
Unblaming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blame, flicker on February 10, 2022| 13 Comments »
It’s not that the northern flicker
is trying to harm the tree—
though it’s drilled hundreds of holes
and the trunk appears to have been hit
with hundreds of bullets
aimed in straight horizontal lines.
The holes are a sign that already
the tree was in distress. It is dying.
Its needles turning to rust.
I notice how I might like to blame
the bird. The bird is not to blame.
I might like to blame the bugs—
but they are doing their invertebrate
work, doing what larvae do.
Is their life a problem? Is my life
a problem? What else might I learn
from this dying tree?
This feasting bird? This grieving me?