for Jay
We stepped into cool autumnal air
ripe with the red scent of tiny crab apples
and charged with the darkling promise of storm.
We were well-armed with studies and stories
on why we might want to choose awe—
but awe chose us the way gold chooses aspen,
the way love chooses friends,
the way shorter days choose fall,
the way beauty chooses what will die.
And aspen leaves whirled all around us
and caught in our hair, and we knew ourselves
as small essential beings in a wide, astonishing world.
*Hey, friends, just saying that the Original Thinkers Festival program on the Power of Awe was AMAZING!!! If you have never checked out Original Thinkers in Telluride, well, it is great for people who are curious and like to engage in conversations about paradox, science, emotion, the natural world and community.
Archive for September, 2022
After Attending the Conversation on Awe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, awe, friendship, nature on September 30, 2022| 5 Comments »
Meeting Grief with More Love, More Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kara johnstad, poetry interview on September 30, 2022| Leave a Comment »
An Hour-Long Conversation with Kara Johnstad/Voice Rising on OMTimes Radio
Where to go when our heart is raw and our limbs are tired? When our bones and brittle and the landscapes barren, are there fat raindrops that wash away the pain? Can the scratch of our pen against plain white paper bring us hope when conversations seem senseless? Join singer/voice coach/visionary Kara Johnstad and poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer in a heartfelt conversation on meeting grief, the power of daily practice, and her upcoming collection of poems, All the Honey. How can poetry save us? How may a word whispered help shake loose stones lodged in our hearts? Aired Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
The Sublime
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, intimacy, lice, tenderness on September 30, 2022| 5 Comments »
In the middle of the night
in a tiny well-lit kitchen
in the middle of a city
known for violence,
my father spent hours
combing my hair
looking for nits,
meticulously pulling through
the toxic shampoo.
The hours passed
with tenderness.
I was grateful then,
but could not know
how sweetly I would come to recall
his patient hands, his quiet devotion,
his exhaustion, my exhaustion,
could not know how
years later I would treasure
those dark hours
when the sirens
blared through the window glass
and hour after hour
came to pass.
Saved
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, impermanence, Rilke, saved by a poem on September 28, 2022| 10 Comments »
Give me your hand.
—this epigraph, and all italic lines by Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Wild Love,” trans. by Joanna Macy
Tonight, again, I slip my hand into the hand of Rilke
and let him lead me into regions of beauty and terror.
Though I weep, though I tremble, he does not let go.
When I praise, he reminds me, No feeling is final.
There was a time, perhaps, when I did not believe
a poem could save my life. Now, I know.
If you could examine my cells, you would see
every single one of them has been tattooed
with his words. I use poems the way others
use a rope, a light, a crust of bread, a knife.
He whispers to me of impermanence.
Is it not the very fragrance of our days?
And yet, he seems to say, in the meantime
there is so much splendor to be made.
*Inspired also by correspondence with Luise Levy and John Mason
One Faith
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cliff, faith, jump, love on September 27, 2022| 4 Comments »
at the edge of a wish
choosing to jump—
you my parachute
Note to the Inner Green Leaves
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, leaves, ripening, self-doubt, trees on September 26, 2022| 2 Comments »
Every day, more gold.
Every day, a sacred spilling
across the mountains, the valleys.
I have felt, before, like an aspen still green
when the surrounding trees
have transformed into radiance.
Oh, this learning to trust our own timing.
In the meantime, every day more gold.
Every day, a sacred spilling.
Rionnach Maoim
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gaelic, heart, landscape of the heart, langauge, moorland on September 25, 2022| 15 Comments »
In Gaelic, they have a phrase that means
the shadows cast on the moorland
by clouds moving across the sky
on a bright and windy day.
Though I did not know
this phrase before today,
I have lived it.
Though I cannot pronounce this phrase,
my heart is a moorland.
I have come to love
the musky scent of heather,
the sweet scent of gorse,
the theater of dark and light.
It is beautiful there,
open and spare
and so very alive,
and for a tall soul,
there is nowhere,
nowhere to hide.
The Prayers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratefulness, grief, opening, prayer, waves on September 25, 2022| 14 Comments »
When I asked the world to open me,
I did not know the price.
When I wrote that two-word prayer in the sand,
I did not know loss was the key,
devastation the hinge,
trust was the dissolution
of the idea of a door.
When I asked the world to open me,
I could never have said yes to what came next.
Perhaps I imagined the waves
knew only how to carry me.
I did not imagine they would also pull me under.
When I asked the world to open me,
I had not imagined drowning
was the way to reach the shore.
The waves of sorrow dragged me down
with their tides of unthinkable loss.
The currents emptied my pockets
and stripped me of my ideas.
I was rolled and eroded
and washed up on the sand
like driftwood—softened.
I sprawled there and wept,
astonished to still be alive.
It is not easy to continue to pray this way.
Open me.
And yet it is the truest prayer I know.
The other truest prayer,
though sometimes I long to run
from its truth, is Thank you.
An Open Thank You Letter to Kristen Who Works at the Cemetery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, compassion, labor day, tenderness on September 24, 2022| 14 Comments »
Her smile was clear sky, was green grass,
was slender stream of waterfall.
Her smile said, You are welcome here.
Her smile said, You are not alone.
She waved to me as I climbed the hill
to sit by the grave of my son and she offered
to water the flowers I’d brought from the garden.
Her offer was pink snapdragon, was orange marigold,
was golden calendula. Her offer said,
There are some things we can do.
Her offer said, I see you.
Thank you, I said. Thank you
for taking care of this place.
I looked around at the trim lawn,
the lovely, well-cared for space
where we bring our dead.
She shrugged and smiled and said,
We love Finn, and backed away,
her right hand pressed to her heart,
her eyes embracing mine.
There are moments so flooded with tenderness
every wall around our heart collapses
from the beauty of it,
and we are left wet and trembling, like newborns.
There are moments when we are so naked
love enters us completely, shakes us from within
and wrecks us, and there,
in the rubble of our defenses
we fall so deeply in love with life,
with the goodness of people,
we are remade.
When I left, she blew me a kiss.
I caught it. Twelve hours later,
I still cradle that kiss in my hand.
The Autumn Morning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, hawk, play, wings on September 23, 2022| 6 Comments »
Perhaps a red-tailed hawk
calls to you through closed windows,
and curious, you leave your work
and step out into the morning.
The air smells of rain and autumn leaves,
and the hawk makes wide circles above the yard
as if showing you how it’s done—
this is how you play with the day.
Everything glitters as the sun emerges.
Everything, even your thoughts.
Even your greatest loss.
The hawk disappears up canyon.
You breathe as if you’ve just remembered how.
When you go back in, you’re careful to fold in your wings.