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.
Archive for June, 2023
Though You Are Far Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged candle, light, Paula Lepp on June 30, 2023| 10 Comments »
The Ask
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dancing, fairy tale, falling in love with the world, rumplestiltskin 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.
What Has Changed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, healing, time 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.
Poetry of Presence II Book Bash!!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Poetry of Presence, reading 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
Some Days It’s Like This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, meeting death, mortality, tea 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.
After a Rogue Hard Frost in Late June
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged frost, garden, resilience, spinach 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.
One Roadtrip
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, roadtrip, sacred, singing on June 23, 2023| 2 Comments »
this song we sing together
as the miles tick by
my temple
The Grown Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, sleep, touch, waking 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.
Shift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, day, night, solstice, summer 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.
Walking Again in Rome, Georgia, at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged georgia, loss, love, not knowing, south, walking on June 20, 2023| 7 Comments »
When the night is warm
and the magnolia blossoms
twine sweetness into the humid dark
and the summer-loud frogs
fill the night with strange song,
I notice you are not here.
I notice the silence
that walks beside me.
There is comfort in it,
the space where your body
might have been.
Perhaps the connection
is something I’ve fashioned
out of longing for connection.
Does that make it any less real?
I speak to you, ask you questions.
I don’t expect answers.
I get none.
All around me, the fireflies
charge the world
with their beautiful,
fleeting light.
Doing Water Aerobics in the Senior Living Community with Janie Bird
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, resilience, swimming, women on June 20, 2023| 6 Comments »
She is over nine decades old,
this woman playing Pitbull
and Taylor Swift. Now run,
she says, and we do our best
to get somewhere by going nowhere
in the turquoise pool.
And she smiles as she tells us
to crisscross our arms, palms facing in,
to scissor our legs as if we are skiing,
to work harder, to make it our best.
I laugh like a child because it’s fun,
this hour when we play in the water,
frisky as ducklings, tender as saplings
inside old trunks, joyful
as old women who remember
how good it feels to be buoyant
as geese, resilient as ourselves.
Father’s Day, 2021
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father's day, happiness, memory, music on June 18, 2023| 3 Comments »
That was the year our small family
strolled the closed-off streets
in Ridgway and listened
to mariachi and country
and a fabulous upright bass.
And my son was at ease,
my daughter content
my husband smiling.
And I remember thinking,
Remember this.
Two years later, I remember
my joy in the moment
now tethered to me like a shadow.
I remember sun warm on our backs.
I remember even then knowing
happiness doesn’t last.
I remember telling myself,
sweetheart, remember.
And I remember. It’s so beautiful
it hurts. I remember.
One for Father’s Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, father's day, laughter on June 18, 2023| 2 Comments »
inside my laughter
stencil of my father’s laughter—
an audible tattoo
Portrait
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, friendship, light, Wendy Videlock on June 17, 2023| 8 Comments »
for Wendy Videlock
It’s all about the light,
she says, as we drive west
and notice one rock fin
standing apart from the rest,
radiant now in its relief.
You could drive right past it
four hundred times and not see it.
Let the heart do what light does—
help me notice new layers of beauty.
I turn to see her as she looks
at the rocks, face naked with awe.
She has always been lovely to me,
but tonight, my god, tonight.
POETRY VIDEO/SINGLE RELEASES TODAY!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark praise, video poem on June 16, 2023| 12 Comments »
Hey friends, I am just THRILLED to share with you the next release from my new spoken word album. Dark Praise will come out in its entirety on July 14, but my guitarist Steve Law and I are releasing a sneak peak! The whole album is in celebration of the dark and all the ways it nourishes us–fostering reflection, communion, receptivity, dreams, intimacy, and … as this poem explores, abandon, pleasure and trust. I hope you enjoy “Wild Rose Goes for a Ride with God”–in which my alter ego and God go on a date one night … PLEASE SHARE IT!
You can download the single on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music and more.
You can pre-purchase the album for $15 on Band Camp.
Poetry by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Music by Steve Law
Art by Marisa S. White, “Caught a Ride with the Moon”
Video by Tony Jeannette
Analog
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, humanness, science, wave on June 16, 2023| 9 Comments »
for Craig
It’s so human, the hand,
how it rises
to wave to a friend,
as if it is a direct extension
of the heart. Perhaps
that is why, in these days
of emojis and AI,
when you write to tell me
you wave each time
you drive past my house,
my hand rises to wave back,
though I don’t know where you are
or when’s the last time
you passed by my home,
but, here, friend,
wherever you are,
here’s my hand,
palm open, arm high,
not electromagnetic
but no less full
of song and light
this wave reaching
across the night.
Learning to Lie Still
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, still, sunshine on June 15, 2023| 4 Comments »
It isn’t easy.
Good, then, to have a cat
come lie in the curve of my arm
with her full weight on my weight,
her warmth against my side.
If she purrs, so much the better.
How could I rise and disrupt
her low gravelly song?
So I lie still. Awake, but not scrolling.
Not speaking. Not running to fix.
It comes to this—my great hope
for learning to lie still
is to become a cushion for cat.
It’s a noble hope—to lie still
as a cat in the curve of an arm,
still as a pool of daylight on the sill,
still as the sun itself, holding the center
as the whole world moves around it.
Sacred Field
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, family, grief, loss, pain, paradox, sunflower on June 13, 2023| 7 Comments »
In the mural, the field of sunflowers
is always in bloom, always golden,
always opening to face the world.
How could I, tonight, not remember
another evening two summers ago
when the light was honeyed
and I stood in this very spot with my son,
two daughters and husband,
and we smiled wide as sunflowers,
our stems tall, the petals of my heart
unfurling. The image still sits in a frame
on my shelf—the last photo I have
of my son. Tonight, when I stood before
all that blooming, I broke. God, it hurt,
but I did not resist the breaking.
I stood in the middle of all that beauty,
the beauty as real as the pain,
the pain as real as any beauty,
stood in the middle of all those flowers
and cried, I cried and broke and
felt myself opening, unfolding like a flower,
my petals doing what petals do.
Letting Go of Knowing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forest, knowing, nature, scent, unknowing, walkiing on June 13, 2023| 14 Comments »
Walking in the sweet honey
and musky scented woods,
I keep searching for what smells
so good, until finally I let
myself be content to walk
in the woods with a honey scent,
and I give up for a time
on naming the world,
and let a step be a step,
let a scent be a scent
and know only I am lucky,
lucky to walk in the musky woods,
the air so refreshing, so sweet.