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Archive for June, 2023

Though You Are Far Away

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 30, 2023| 10 Comments »

       for Paula
 
 
On your birthday,
I light a candle in my kitchen.
There is no cake, no singing,
no balloons, no streamers,
but there is love
and there is this small light
that no one will blow out.
It will burn all night,
this little flame that celebrates
the enormity of your life—
you, more sun than candlelight.
you, more blaze than glimmer.
Even thousands of miles away,
I feel your warmth—since we met,
it’s never left me.
I see the world with that light.

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The Ask

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 28, 2023| 2 Comments »

Among your duties, pleasure is a thing that also needs accomplishing.
            —Tony Hoagland, “The Word”
 
 
Perhaps it looked like I was dancing,
but I was being danced, was being twirled
by some great mystical spinning wheel
turning the straw of my thoughts into gold.
What a gift to have a body, to be alive
on a night when the sun is warm
and the grass is green and the mountains
are not yet tinder dry and the music is joyful
and the minutes slip through the hours
like page after page of happily ever
and there is no imp to be seen, just
the glory of brass shining in the air
and the miracle of hands clapping
as if applause is the only response that makes sense,
and the only thing the world asks of me
is to love it.

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What Has Changed

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 28, 2023| 8 Comments »

There was a time I knew in days
how long it had been since you died.
There was a time when every Saturday
signified another week, when the fourteenth
marked another month. I don’t know when
I stopped counting, when the days and weeks
and months no longer felt like mules
tethered to the post of that day,
each of them carrying the terrible weight
of your loss. Now the moments are more like birds.
I fly on them. The memory of you flies with me.

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Poetry of Presence II Book Bash!!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on June 26, 2023| 2 Comments »

  • WHAT: A celebration of Poetry of Presence II: More Mindfulness Poems (published May, 2023). More details about the anthology below.
  • WHEN: Tuesday, June 27, 2023, 6:30PM Central (7:30PM Eastern, 5:30PM Mountain, 4:30PM Pacific)
  • FREE BUT REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
  • THIS EVENT WILL NOT BE RECORDED.
  • FEATURING Annette Grunseth, Christen Careaga, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Marjorie Saiser, Laura Ann Reed, Thomas Smith, Ellery Akers, Gloria Heffernan, and Barbara Crooker. They will read one of their own poems plus another poem they appreciate from the collection. The program will conclude with a brief conversation about the importance of (mindfulness) poetry to a healthy society.

ALSO … friends, I wrote a companion book for this anthology, Exploring Poetry of Presence II: Prompts to Deepen Your Writing Practice. There are 88 invitations to write on your own, leaping out of the poems in this collection. 

 “Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has always been a wise and gentle guide, leading us into deeper presence with her luminous poems. Yet what she has crafted here, as a companion to an already soul-nourishing anthology, is nothing short of a sacred text that will lift you up, and keep you company on the whole human journey—from joy to loss and back to the joy of full aliveness again.”
—James Crews, author of Kindness Will Save the World

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Oh, the Longing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 26, 2023| 6 Comments »




Let longing be longing.
Though it rises in me
with insistent hunger.
Though it clutches for my heart
with outstretched hands,
pins me with pleading eyes
Let longing be longing.
Never has it worked
to pretend I don’t hear it
as it shouts its demands
or charms me with silken promises.

In a vision I said no to the longing,
and the longing only grew
like a shadow on the wall.
But when I said yes, longing, I see you—
(and what was it that was saying yes?
a voice not me, but through me)—
the yes filled me like a warm and golden glow,
color of sunrise, color of pollen,
and there was nothing it could not touch—
this woman, this longing,
the shadow itself.

Where does this yes come from?
I don’t know. But now everything
is infused with its light
and the longing is longing
and I am a woman who sometimes longs
for what she cannot have.
Even the no is shining.

 

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Some Days It’s Like This

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 25, 2023| 4 Comments »

Today it is somehow easy to know I will die.
Meeting mortality feels as possible, as natural
as inviting someone over for tea.
Caffeine or no caffeine, I ask.
Mortality shrugs as if it’s all the same.
I settle on the new tea I bought yesterday,
assam with rose petals. It’s dark and floral
and makes the mouth come alive.
You’re really not afraid of me today?
mortality asks. I shrug and say, Not right now.
We sip from our cups and stare out at the field
where the wind is whipping the tall grasses
in rhythmic pulses. “It’s good,” says mortality.
I nod. And we sit in content silence.
There just isn’t much to say.  
When our cups are empty, mortality
doesn’t leave. It occurs to me then
my invitation to tea wasn’t necessary.  
Mortality was already here.
It moves with me as I rise to clear the dishes,
as I wash the cups, as I walk out
into the wind, into the field.

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After a Rogue Hard Frost in Late June

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 25, 2023| 2 Comments »

The usual suspects wilt and die.
Basil, of course, and beans. Potatoes.
Zinnias. Nasturtiums. Marigolds.
I find myself staring at the beet greens,
spinach, and arugula, marveling
at how they thrive, impervious to cold.
 
I have a craving for resilience.
I pull the dark leaves to my mouth,
devour the green communion.
It tastes like survival, so bitter, so bright.

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One Roadtrip

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 23, 2023| 2 Comments »

this song we sing together
as the miles tick by
my temple

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The Grown Daughter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 23, 2023| 7 Comments »


 
Before my eyes are open,
I reach across the bed
to find my mother’s arm
atop the comforter
still heavy with sleep.
I settle my fingers there
like a butterfly landing
on a flower the same color
as its wings. Grateful
for this simple proof
she is here, soft and breathing
beside me, I fall back asleep,
my hand still touching her.
Long after we wake,
I still feel it in my hand,
not her arm itself,
but the reaching.

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Shift

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 21, 2023| 6 Comments »

On the longest day of the year,
my mother and I sit on her back porch
and wade into worlds where we disagree.
I watch the surface of the lake—
how the reflection changes as day
becomes dusk becomes night,
every moment of it beautiful.
How quiet it is, this shift,
so quiet a woman could miss it.

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