the day flooded with worry,
I become sailboat—
your words the wind
Archive for August, 2023
One Encouragement
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, encouragement, friendship, sailboat, worry on August 30, 2023| 12 Comments »
Aftermath
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, flowers, kindness on August 29, 2023| 10 Comments »
Those seeds you planted
in me with your words—
all through the night they rooted,
grew stems, sprouted leaves.
By morning, I’m in full bloom,
my thoughts a rebellion of petals,
a mutiny of beauty
where once only shadows spread.
All day, your words unfold
in layers of purples and unruly golds.
I like it when people stare—
everywhere I go, I share this:
the aftermath of your kindness.
Holding Your Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, heart, love, touch, tree on August 29, 2023| 7 Comments »
I want to trace the rings of your heart
the way I would trace tree rings—
not to count them
but to honor each season of you.
I want to touch my fingertips
to your scars, want to learn
your heart’s stories, find clues
of how you became who you are.
I want to press my palms
to your heart and praise
how it is we grow,
even in disaster, even in drought,
want to praise the dark center,
the time-thick bark, the record
of the ordinary days. I want
to chart the thin slivers of your wounds
and let my hands speak love,
want to tell you in a language
of quiet touch, I see you.
Sunday Afternoon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, pond, present moment, summer on August 27, 2023| 7 Comments »
Balanced together on a paddleboard
my daughter and I float across the pond.
Already we’ve splashed and tipped
and swum and squealed. Already
we’ve followed dozens of blue dragonflies
with our eyes and greeted
the crawdads that cling to the reeds.
We’ve wrestled and tussled
and dunked and dried and now
we lie on our backs and glide
in the late August sun
and warmth seeps into our skin.
She tells me stories, and my eyes are closed,
and I think, This is why I am alive.
And if the moment is somehow made sweeter
because we’ve been intimate with death,
that is something seen only in retrospect.
In the moment, we are sunbeam and story
and the tickle of damselflies
that land on our skin. We are the aimless drift
from light to light.
When It Rains
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cloud, opening, prayer, rain, unease on August 27, 2023| 9 Comments »
When a cloud follows me
as if we are tethered,
can I find peace with the shade?
It’s easy to wish it away.
Can I wish it away
and at the same time
tilt my head back,
keep my eyes wide
and breathe?
These are the days
I learn to pray—
pray not for what I want,
but to be opened
by what is here.
When My Friend Asks Me a Difficult Question
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged langauge, truth, water lily, words on August 25, 2023| 9 Comments »
I close my eyes
as if the truth might rise
from the dark
the way leaves
of water lilies
float greenly at the edge
of two worlds.
When the words do come,
I taste shine in them.
Now I don’t want to speak
in any language
that doesn’t open like lilies,
nourished by depths,
encouraged by light.
The Night of My First Kiss
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark praise, first kiss, video poem on August 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Remember when you first felt a tug of desire? “With Red Thread” is a track on DARK PRAISE, a spoken-word album that honors the dark and how it opens us to creativity, passion, intimacy, revelation, dreaming, receptivity, self-discovery and connection. As I explore in this poem, there are ways the dark sets the stage for intimacy–in this case, a first kiss. You can purchase the whole album here. You can listen to it and download it for free on Spotify or iTunes or wherever you listen to music. And you can see all the videos we’ve released so far on my youtube channel here. Thanks to my amazing guitar player partner Steve Law who produced the album. Please share the video and listen to the songs!
Poetry by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Music by Steve Law
Art by Marisa S. White
Video by Tony Jeannette
New Epoch for the Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dragonfly, evolution, heart, resilience on August 24, 2023| 5 Comments »
I think of how the narrow blue bodies
of the dragonfly ancestors
once skimmed clear lakes—
over a hundred million years
before the great diplodocus
came to wade—
how they flew through the Permian,
the Cretaceous, through mornings,
through meteors, through floods,
through to the Holocene, to now.
How much change they have seen
before coming to balance here
on the reeds beside me,
their bodies like thin blue proofs
of resilience, endurance, constancy.
Meanwhile, the sun is disappearing
below the horizon.
Meanwhile this heart, too,
is learning to adapt, to become
something as surprising as beauty
that survives great challenge,
something as durable, as delicate
as gossamer wings.
Happy Birthday, Suzi! This one’s for you!!!
This Land
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, ekphrasis, grief, wilderness on August 23, 2023| 8 Comments »
Grieving is a wilderness.
—Tara Brach, “Being with Love, Death and Grief,” July 13, 2023
Grieving is a wilderness I wear,
a long flaring coat
with cuffs of deep water
and hems lined with deserts
and birds that migrate
across my chest.
As soon as I think grief is one thing,
it’s another, vast expanses
with no known paths—
cracks to fall through,
cliffs to climb.
Sometimes, I slip from grief’s heavy silks,
and gaze at it as if it’s art.
There is terror in its folds.
But with buttes of gold
and storm-blue skies,
grief is also, my god,
so beautiful.
Writing Into Paradox
Posted in Uncategorized on August 23, 2023| 2 Comments »
A conversation/class hosted by Laurie Wagner of 27 Powers
Live Online, Monday, August 28, 2023 (9-10:30 Mountain Time)
We live in a paradoxical world, and are being asked more and more to hold the complexity of these times; natural beauty meets climate change, meets wars and newborn babies, and everything we hope for meets everything we fear. How as people do we make sense of these opposing truths? How as writers can we expand the way we hold these realities so that we can write into their complexity and represent the world as it is, with eyes wide open?
In our session, Rosemerry will talk about:
- Why poetry and all of our writing need opposition.
- She’ll teach us how to use paradox in our writing so that we can face the page in a more honest, more complex way, and so we can write about what it really means to be alive.
- We will look at examples of paradox in our work.
- Rosemerry will lead us into some writing that invites us to see the complexities in our lives and bring them alive on the page.
The effect of paradox on the page and in the body is spaciousness. In the poem it says, this is how it is to be alive.
To register, visit here.
Cost: $37
PLEASE NOTE: For those who can’t make the live call or who want to review, the video replay will be sent within 24 hours of the live call.