At the edge of the Big Five parking lot,
in a tree still fully leafed out in November,
there must have been hundreds of invisible birds
all singing as if singing is what a day is for,
and the riotous song traveled
over the vast black asphalt sea
crossing all the organizing straight white lines—
so much song for such a small tree—
and stunned, my daughter and I stood and listened,
our rush stopped by the glorious commotion,
as if awe is what a day is for,
as if we exist to be stretched ever wider by disbelief,
as if we are here to know ourselves
as part of something greater,
the world calling us again and again
deeper into the mystery.
Archive for November, 2023
While in the Middle of Many Errands
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, birdsong, daughter, parkinglot on November 12, 2023| 13 Comments »
Learning to Love Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ekphrasis, falling in love with the world, klimt, love, paradox, trust on November 11, 2023| 14 Comments »
We learn to love by being loved.
—Rafael J. Gonzalez, personal correspondence
There are days now when I feel so embraced by life
it’s as if life itself is pulling me into its great, strong arms,
surrounding me with warmth, tenderness, radiance,
as if life is whispering into my ear, loving and low,
I’ve got you, sweetheart, I’ve got you.
Not that I’ve forgotten how fear enters in
with its wide-eyed hunger, how grief gnaws at raw flesh,
how the heart’s walls fall down in cacophonous descent,
but there are, I must tell you, golden hours sparked with joy,
love-dappled days steeped in flowers and song
and I can’t pretend it’s not beautiful,
can’t not share how the same life that ravages us
also gathers us in so gently, so surely
that we, too, become golden, become sun and moon,
become rapturous bloom, become kiss.
inspired by The Beethoven Frieze (1901), Gustav Klimt
What the Mermaids Sang
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged depths, ekphrasis, klimt, ocean, truth on November 11, 2023| 9 Comments »
after Mermaids (1898) by Gustav Klimt
Truths are hidden from the surface.
—motto of Carl von Rokitansky, head of the Vienna School of Medicine, who influenced Klimt
We’ve traveled to the waters dark and cold
where the only light to be found
is the light you learn to make with your own body.
We have traveled to the depths
where we were crushed by pressure,
where the only way to move is slow,
where the only nourishment is what is dead,
and now we arrive on shores of gold.
There are seas in you, deep trenches
you’d rather perhaps not explore.
But you must meet the mystery—
must be changed by all you cannot know.
It will widen your eyes forever.
Dear swimmer, this change is the treasure.
Three Online December Offerings
Posted in Uncategorized on November 11, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Sitting in the Midst of It All: A writing & self-care retreat
Dec. 7 & 8
Join Courage & Renewal facilitator Marcia Eames-Sheavly and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for a mini-writing retreat—a day and a half of self-care, wonder, quietude, gentleness, acceptance and connection. The wonderful Marcia will be guiding us in Parker Palmer’s Circle of Trust. For more information, visit here.
“Turning Toward Life with a Pen in Your Hand”: Exploring Poetry of Presence II
Nov. 28-Dec. 19
“What does it mean to be alive?”
Consider this an invitation to join your voice to the big conversation about that question! In this four-week writing series, we’ll converse with poems from Poetry of Presence II: More Mindfulness Poems, an anthology of poems that “crack open the tough stuff and spill out the light.” Every class will consist of reading and unpacking poems, two sessions of original writing, optional sharing, and lots of talk about process. This is a chance to “practice mindfulness smack dab in the middle of our busy lives” through writing—partaking in wonder, embracing paradox, trusting life, and meeting our own lives as living poems.
To register or for more information visit here.
Stubborn Praise with James Crews
Dec. 18
Join Rosemerry & poetry friend and partner James Crews for an evening of conversing about poetry, change and transformation. This program was originally scheduled for October but had to be rescheduled. If you were previously signed up, you’re in! You should have received your registration info already. Even if you were not previously signed up, you can sign up now! For more information and to register, visit here.
One Sacredness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, breath, wonder on November 10, 2023| 7 Comments »
an altar for wonder—
that small pause
before you speak
On a Night When My Daughter Is Struggling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, daughter, love, mother, presence, struggle on November 8, 2023| 18 Comments »
I won’t tell her it is up to her
to repair the broken world.
Perhaps that comes later
with pen or needle, pointe shoe or song.
But for now, the thing to do
is to sit together in the broken world
and feel how it is to be broken.
To let shame sit with us.
Let grief sit with us.
To feel the sharp nails of fear.
It is not wrong to feel small,
to feel frightened, to be lost.
Nor must we feel these things alone.
So for now, I sit with her
in the brokenness
with no tools, no salve,
no metaphor of redemption.
It is not enough, perhaps
to meet brokenness
with nothing but love
and breath and a willingness
to be nowhere but here,
but in this broken moment,
it is everything.
The Grand Quilt
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, community, connection, quilt, sewing, togetherness on November 7, 2023| 18 Comments »
I don’t believe we can stitch together
only scraps of beauty, squares of light.
I don’t believe in a quilt that doesn’t also
have patches of sorrow, blocks of ache.
Such pieces are, of course, much harder
to want to stitch in. But it matters
that we do not exclude them.
It matters right now that we don’t pretend
they do not exist.
It matters that we sew every piece
into the grand cloth.
It matters, too,
how we sew these pieces in,
perhaps using our finest silk thread,
perhaps with an elaborate stitch
our grandmother taught us,
or perhaps we must use
a stitch we make up
because no one ever taught us
how to do this most difficult task—
to meet what at first seems unwanted, wrong,
and to incorporate it into the whole
and to do this for as long as we can stitch,
that’s how long.
Dactylography
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, fingerprint, heart, love on November 7, 2023| 6 Comments »
Just when you think you know who you are,
you take a closer look at your heart
and notice it is marked
with the whorls and loops and arches
of everyone you’ve ever loved
and everyone who has ever loved you—
those who left you, who broke you,
and those who still charm and nourish you.
As if the heart’s reason for being
is simply to be shaped and reshaped
by the hands of the world.
As if the detectives of love
could visit your heart
with their fingerprint powder
and lifting tape and unfold the mystery
of how you became who you are,
fashioned by the uniqueness of others,
discovering your heart
is not a crime scene at all,
but a rare and incomparable work of art.
Perhaps Inevitable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, hiding, klimt, mask, revelation, vulnerability on November 5, 2023| 4 Comments »
after Gustav Klimt’s “Tragedie”
even now beneath
the stony gray mask of control
I feel it growing
a shimmering flower of purest gold
the naked truth
*
To sign up for the class that inspired this poem (and yesterday’s, too)–it’s not too late!–see below. Though the three-week class began last Friday, you could watch the recording of the first class and join us for the next two sessions.
Love, Sex, Death and Everything: A Creativity Playshop with Gustav Klimt
Nov. 3, 10, 17, 11a.m. -1 p.m. MST
Three weeks of exploring what lurks in the depths of humanity. Each class consists of a deep Jungian-oriented dive into music and myths behind Klimt’s images led by Kayleen Asbo, interwoven with Rosemerry leading an exploration of mortality, passion, terror and beauty in your own creative writing practice. For more information and to register, visit here.
Death Writes to Rosemerry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, epistle on November 4, 2023| 6 Comments »
Sweetheart,
don’t think I didn’t notice
how you woke this morning,
your body humming with life.
Don’t think I didn’t thrill with you
in the ecstasy of breath,
the astonishment you felt
in your own being.
I, too, love the lilt of inhale,
the rush of exhale,
but oh, dear woman,
I will teach you to love
the sweet deep calm in between,
that kingdom of stillness
that touches eternity.
Don’t ask me questions
I cannot answer for you.
I will come for you when I come,
and you will come with me.
But even now I shape you,
even now when you
are so in love with life,
even now as you find
a new slant of light to sit in,
even now as you tremble,
pulsing with promises
you have no idea if you can keep,
even now as you throb with joy,
as you ache with love.
Even now, I shape you,
even now.
Poetry on Difficult Times
Posted in Uncategorized on November 3, 2023| 2 Comments »
Oh friends, so many beautiful collaborations:
- Here are two beautiful pieces that touch on these difficult times, both set to music and narrated by my friend Michael R. Justice, the first on what we might wish we could offer our children in challenging times, the second on how the world (and love) rise up to meet us when we think we can’t possibly meet more grief.
- Here’s a poem in the fabulous journal Vox Populi about how the past and the present are so deeply intertwined, how love from the past can be so present for us now.
Into the Questions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, conversation, love, love your enemy, pain, tenderness on November 3, 2023| 13 Comments »
I needed today the soft voice of the man
from Bethlehem saying,
Put yourself in the pain of others.
Not in their shoes, but in their pain.
I needed to see his eyes
when he said it is olive picking season
and the families are too afraid
to go to the orchards.
I needed to hear it is the hardest
his life has ever been,
needed to hear his fear, his anger,
his willingness to wonder
again and again,
What does it mean to love your enemy?
I needed to see the open face
of the man in Israel as he listened,
needed to hear his gentle tone
as he rejected the phrase us vs. them.
Needed to hear the resolve in his voice
as he called for creating an us together.
And because in the arms of terror
these two men find ways to love,
I invite a war into my heart
and imagine myself on both sides,
imagine the ache that fuels the rage.
I don’t have to imagine fear, distrust.
It is in all of us, this war,
not somewhere far away.
It is for all of us to ask in every interface,
How do I love my enemy?
How do we become an us?
How to Transform What is Dense and Dark?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, dark praise, earthworm on November 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »
One in the Cemetery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged all souls, cemetery on November 2, 2023| 9 Comments »
barefoot in the grass
we sang and read poems
amongst the dead so wildly alive
Update on the Prayer Bead Poem Project
Posted in Uncategorized on November 1, 2023| 5 Comments »
Oh friends, it’s so heart-warming, heart opening, heart-filling, the response to this poetry project begun just this week by my friend Jess. Here’s a note from her:
Thank you so much for your contributions to the Prayer Bead Project.
Click HERE to see the Project in progress.
The response has been overwhelming, in the best of ways. My heart continues to be gently cracked open, and also refilled, as I read not only the poems but the accompanying notes. Some of you are caring for new lives, infants. Some are arranging for hospice care for loved ones. Some of you are traveling through heavily guarded airports. Some are watching birds out the window. You have been moved to write for the first time in years. And, you sent no poem at all, while acknowledging your numbness and despair. I wish there was a way to share THIS part of the project with you. So I am offering it back, as best I can.
As I wrote to one contributor-poet, I have a unique opportunity (via email) to unwrap each offering, roll it around in my heart, give it some time. See what lingers.
I hope you’ll do the same as you look at the thread.
To read them quickly one after the other… something gets lost in that.
I hope your participation brings you something meaningful. It is so beautiful, I am aching with the beauty of the thing.
With love and gratitude,
Jess
Any ongoing contributions may be emailed to: jessstevensyoga@gmail.com💙
On All Saints’ Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged all saints' day, daughter, father, saint on November 1, 2023| 8 Comments »
A Saint is someone who has become fully themselves and left a legacy of courage, compassion or creativity that has left a light to encourage us on our path.
—Kayleen Asbo
If, as my friend suggests,
a saint is someone
who has become fully themselves,
who offers us a light on our path,
then you, Dad, are a saint.
Saint of fishermen who stand
in freezing rain. Saint of fathers
of daughters who want to be poets.
Saint of grandfathers
who listen to their grandchildren’s stories.
Saint of ice cream lovers.
Saint of men who remember
to bring their wives flowers.
Saint of cars with loud horns.
Saint of those who giggle till they cry.
Saint of rummage sales
and all who fix everything with duct tape.
And you are the saint of the ones
who are in terrible pain
and yet wake up each morning
and bring kindness.
And you are the saint of the ones
with fathers who were cruel
and did not pass on that cruelty.
And you are the saint
of fathers who coach wrestling
to their sons.
The saint of fathers who cry
at their daughter’s plays.
The saint of this woman
who loves you,
saint of this woman
still learning to pray.