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.
For a Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, firefly, light, proof on September 21, 2022| 16 Comments »
It’s the kind of night I wish for a firefly.
The fact that they don’t live here
doesn’t stop me from wishing.
Is it so wrong to want some small proof
of light in the darkness?
What I really want? Proof of miracles.
Proof of life beyond life.
Oh world, you’ve given me proof.
And I want more.
Perhaps it would be more poetic
if I could find my own bioluminescence—
even a metaphoric inner light.
Instead, I find my own wanting.
Hello wanting.
Hello wishing for something that isn’t here.
Because there are no fireflies,
I conjure the memory of fireflies.
Because there are no fireflies,
I sit in the darkness—how vast it is.
How full of dignity. How humbling.
I sit in the darkness until the darkness
scrubs me of me, until the darkness
feels like a proof for miracles,
until infinite space rushes in,
until for a moment
I forget how to wish for anything but what is.
Getting to I Don’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged certainty, prayer, uncertainty on September 20, 2022| 9 Comments »
Sometimes, too certain I know what love is,
I miss love.
It’s like thinking water is waves,
not seeing water is also the depths of ocean,
the muscle of river, the body, the air,
ice, snow, fog, clouds, mist.
Sometimes, longing to hear certain words,
I neglect to hear the words that are spoken.
Or craving a certain touch, I disregard
all other touch, and my skin believes it is starving.
There is beauty beyond beauty, love beyond love,
opening beyond opening, an apple inside apple.
Let my prayer be I don’t know.
Let me find the door inside the door,
the glimmer inside the glimmer,
the human inside this woman.
The god inside of god.
Elegy for Laurie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged elegy, humility, inspiration, Laurie James on September 19, 2022| 8 Comments »
“Who am I to inspire someone else and prod a good poem out of them? I don’t see myself in that light.” —Laurie James, poet, friend, performer, organizer, member of the tribe, in an interview with Eduardo Brummel, Write More Now, 2017
A cantankerous sparrow of a woman,
I imagine her rolling her eyes at death
as she lights up a cigarette and says,
“Let’s get on with it.”
A relentlessly generous bear of a woman,
already I hear rumors she’s visiting people
from the other side, asking them to dance.
She was the one who would build the nest
big enough for us all to fit.
She was the one who’d carve us a space—
carve it out of nothing, if that’s what she had—
so we could gather and rock each other’s worlds.
She was the one who knew the weight of moonlight,
the one who went from mute to muse.
She was the one with the mischievous smile,
the nomad with poems for a road.
She was the one who inspired us
to be family as we write.
She was perhaps the only one
who didn’t see herself in that light.
Meeting Anger
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, bats on September 18, 2022| 10 Comments »
My little brother and I sat on the back porch steps,
huddled into the thin wisps of each other’s bodies,
weeping. Though there is no photo of this,
I see it as if it is framed. It is summer.
The house behind us is yellow.
We are wearing more skin than clothes,
and our arms are slender ribbons binding us.
Inside, our parents are shouting. I am five,
and it is the first time I have heard them fight.
I don’t know what the argument is about,
but their voices escape the walls on black wings
and circle my brother and me like bats.
Once the yellow walls are quiet again,
my mother finds us huddled on the stairs
and wraps her wide arms around us both.
I beg her, Please, don’t get a divorce.
She tells me when people shout
it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.
That is the first moment I understand
I do not understand anger.
It will be years before I am frightened to discover
all the black wings that roost inside me—
a cauldron of anger that colonizes in the dark.
It will be years before I learn to be more curious
than fearful. Years before I can hear the dark flutterings
and not shut down. Years before I can say to anger, thank you.
Years before I notice when anger arrives,
it always has something to teach me.
One Tracking Joy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desrt, mud on September 18, 2022| 2 Comments »
thigh high in mud—
somewhere down there
a footprint we can follow
Pricklesome
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindness, prickly, seeds on September 17, 2022| 10 Comments »
Piercing the softest sweater I own
are dozens of thin black seeds,
needle-sharp and needle-stiff.
Their purpose: to spread.
They prick, they lance, they jab, they spear.
They refuse to be ignored.
It took only seconds for them to attach,
but to extricate them?
Today, again, I was reminded
how I do not wish
to be a carrier of sharp things.
I do not wish to sow what is prickly,
do not want to propagate
what might bring pain to someone else.
The world continues to teach me,
Be soft. Spread kindness, only kindness.
That is the voice I most wish to hear.
I pull the dark seeds from the fabric.
I place them where they will never take root.
The night air kisses my skin where they were.
Bouquet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, garden, grandmother, love, step mother on September 16, 2022| 4 Comments »
for Shawnee
This morning, knowing you were coming,
I went to the garden and cut the largest sunflower
to put in a vase on the table.
It was the loveliest of all the garden’s flowers,
planted from seed four months ago.
When I was younger than you are now,
my grandmother gave me voluptuous roses
in a simple blue glass vase.
I felt so connected to her this morning
as I made a bouquet for you.
I understood something new of devotion.
Unable to thank her, I thanked
the sunflower. Her love from three decades ago
pulsed through the stem like sunshine.
How did I not feel the full magnitude then?
I give all that love to you.
One Impossible Act?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged circus, impossible, risk, urgency on September 14, 2022| 2 Comments »
falling from the high wire—
now’s a good time
to learn to fly
Everyone Talks About the Light in the Darkness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, love on September 13, 2022| 11 Comments »
There is a light inside the light,
a light that ever burns.
It’s easy not to notice it
when it’s surrounded with other light,
but it is there, shining.
It is, perhaps, like a candle
lit at noon in a sun-bright room—
almost imperceptible, and yet
to the one who lit the candle,
the light it offers
is so much more than photons.
It requires trust to receive
the light no one else can see,
this light that weaves through
the light of the world to reach you,
this light that shines for you.
What I Can Offer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blessing, healing, love on September 12, 2022| 11 Comments »
for S & J
I want to give you something
necessary as rain and lasting as honey,
something useful as a spoon,
something helpful as wheels.
Sometimes it feels so inadequate
to offer you a poem, a prayer,
the small light of a candle,
a hammock woven only of blessings.
Still, as you meet these difficult hours
I wish you the peace of the amber field,
wish you the rose quartz of dawn.
Because it’s what I can do, I offer you poems,
prayers, the small flame of a candle, and
a hammock of blessings woven with dark, with light.