with thanks to Heidi
It is not the best raspberry.
There have been berries sweeter,
more perfectly formed,
berries I’ve harvested
warm from the bush,
berries that have made me
close my eyes and rhapsodize
about the perfect, juicy,
bulbous joy of raspberry.
Still, this small and fragile fruit
packaged in a plastic shell
sings ripe and red on my tongue,
and on this January morning
it brings news of sunshine somewhere.
I delight in its tartness, its bite.
Bless what is good enough.
Not only bless but cherish—
Cherish this good enough morning
with its good enough fruit
in this kitchen cleaned well enough
for this good enough woman
living into the good enough day,
my mouth slightly puckered,
taste of raspberry still bright
on my tongue.
Archive for January, 2024
Beyond Perfect
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, contentment, good enough, imperfection, perfection, raspberry on January 31, 2024| 9 Comments »
The Same Trail, Only Different
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eagle, friendship, gratefulness, time on January 31, 2024| 4 Comments »
for Michelle
After staring at the eagle
in the barren cottonwood,
I stare at you as you stare at it,
knowing the moment more precious
because we’re together on this river trail
stopping to stare at the white-feathered head,
the sharp yellow beak,
the thrill of the stillness of the bird.
How much of my life
has been better because
I shared it with you?
Heartbreak and gray mud,
surgeries and eighties songs,
short skirts and big hats
and cars with fast engines,
all of it fleeting as the chance
to watch an eagle on a branch,
glorious in part because we know
it will soon fly away.
So much change so fast. This is why
we hold out our arms to each other,
why we bury our noses in the pungent sage.
This is why we laugh until we cry,
cry until we laugh.
It’s the only life we have.
The Wellness Visits
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged doctor, gratefulness, grief on January 30, 2024| 8 Comments »
for Scott
There in the lobby of the shipping store
was the man who for years
measured my son and weighed
my son and checked his lungs, his tongue,
his vision, made sure his knees
swung out when hit with a mallet.
Standing between pallets of cardboard
and the counter piled with tape,
I didn’t mean to blurt out, My son is dead.
Hours later, I wonder if I could have
spared him this blade of truth.
Mostly, I wanted to thank him,
his efforts of the past somehow
even more precious now.
I wanted him to know it matters,
the care he gave. It matters
that he, too, did his best to help the boy
grow strong. It matters, his kindness.
How he helped us feel at ease.
It matters that I have this now:
the memory of a sapling boy
in a thin blue gown sitting tall,
shoulders back, on the edge
of an exam table, looking this man
in the eye with such seriousness,
breathing in, breathing out
as deeply as he can.
Awkward, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, clumsy, love on January 28, 2024| 4 Comments »
It can be so clumsy,
this loving you.
I wish, sometimes
to love you like a song,
something that soars
and fills you with awe.
Instead, like today,
I seem to love you
like a bird that walks
and hops and bobs
instead of flying
and wheeling high above—
it’s seemingly graceless,
but oh love,
what I want most
is to be close.
Ambush
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, guns, trauma, triggered on January 28, 2024| 14 Comments »
Hi dear readers,
Before you read this poem, I feel as if i should warn you that it talks about guns and alludes to the trauma that guns can cause. And if this would in any way provoke you, I wanted to give you the chance to not read today’s poem. But it didn’t feel right to leave you poem-less … so here, in case you want a poem that does not mention guns, is one from a year ago today about beets in which no one gets hurt.
Thank you for joining me for this daily practice. I am so grateful you’re in this with me.
Rosemerry
Ambush
It only shoots lasers,
I tell myself as the biathlon
skiers skate by with guns
strapped to their backs,
smiles wide on their faces.
I smile and wave back
and on this most blue
day of winter, I start weeping
in the middle of the perfectly
groomed corduroy track as my
heart falls apart again, because
apparently that’s what this heart
does when reminded what a trigger
can do. Corrine holds me
until the tears slow
and we stand there together
in the spruce and the snow
until I am again exactly here,
in this year, on these skis,
on this day, with this blue,
with this sharp burn of loss,
with this still pulsing love,
with these arms of a friend,
with this heart that after two
years is no less broken. Nor,
I notice, is this heart less whole.
I don’t hear a gunshot,
just as I didn’t then.
I wade into the silence
like a baptism.
Midnight Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dreams vs. reality, lover, nightmare, reality, sleep, storm on January 27, 2024| 4 Comments »
heart thumping fast
as windshield wipers
attempting to keep
the vision clear
in a hurricane,
oh love,
lay your sleep-warm hand
on my sleep-warm leg,
remind me what is dream,
what is real
The Broken Heart Goes Dancing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bluegrass, dancing, heartbreak, joy, music on January 26, 2024| 8 Comments »
at The Infamous Stringdusters show
Give me a night made of strings,
a night that is plucked
and strummed and bowed and picked,
a night with a driving, ecstatic music
and nothing to do but be danced
by the night as if each string of dobro
and fiddle and bass is attached
to an arm, a foot, a hip,
to the curling edge of an upper lip—
and even the broken heart is tugged
from its chair by bronze-coated strings
until it’s an open and rhythmic thing
that beats for the bliss of it, beats
for the song of it, beats
for the joy-swaying head-shaking lift
of it, beats because that’s what a heart
is for, and for hours the night
pulls every string, and the heart
beats out more, please, more.
Exploring Ordinary Blessings: Reading & Writing from The Wonder of Small Things
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged playshop, The Wonder of Small Things on January 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Reading and writing poems offers us fresh lenses with which to re-see our lives. Side effects may include reverence, wonder, connection. And when we read and write poems together, this practice of noticing and sharing can create a generous and thoughtful community that nourishes us in essential, beautiful ways. Join poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for five weeks of reading poems from The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace & Renewal, edited by James Crews. You will need to buy the book before the class begins. In each class, we will discuss poems from the book, then use them as launching points for our own writing practice. There will be optional sharing at the end of each class. Limited to 12 people per section.
Open to all levels of writing—from never-wrote-a-poem-before to Pulitzer Prize winners.
10 a.m. to noon mountain time
two sections:
Tuesday cohort (Feb 13-March 12)
Wednesday cohort (Feb 14-March 13)
In Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, conversation, identity, language, love, words on January 25, 2024| 12 Comments »
The sound of your voice
enters me and becomes me—
becomes synapse, becomes pulse,
becomes blood, becomes breath.
And in this way, the more I listen to you,
the more I become you.
It is no small thing to converse.
Sometimes I swim in the wild honey
of your words. Sometimes I break
on their jagged shores.
Some words become pillars that hold up
what is possible.
Others are wrecking balls
that turn to rubble all I thought I knew.
How fleeting it is, any grasp
of who we are. This is why,
hour after month after year
I welcome your words—
I like what they do.
Even when they are not easy to hear,
I love who I become
when I listen to you.
This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged freedom, spaciousness on January 24, 2024| 8 Comments »
Sit with the freedom in your heart.
Feel it expanding into your palms—
in this moment whole galaxies
seem to fit inside your fingertips. How?
When did you become this vast?
Was this spaciousness always here?
Could you have felt this way yesterday
if only you had gotten out of your own way?
Sit with the freedom in your heart—
more beautiful than any story—
feel it surge through you
until your body forgets any limits
and knows itself as infinite.
Freedom will do what freedom does—
invite you to touch the source of the universe,
replace, for this moment, your fear with awe.
Choosing the Sorrow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choice, grief, love, river, rocks, sorrow on January 22, 2024| 6 Comments »
In my heart today, a river of love for you—
sparkling, clear, easy to wade in.
Some may not understand
why I sometimes reach down
to pick up a smooth stone of sorrow,
not because I have stumbled on it,
but because I want to know its weight again.
I search beneath the glossy currents,
and always I find what I seek.
There are thousands of such stones,
enough to cover the whole river bed.
Every one of them precious.
Every one of them, a memory
of how it was to love you when you were alive.
Stone of you waking in your crib, pointing to light.
Stone of you doing tricks on your bike.
Stone of hiking up cliffs. Stone of undone dishes.
Stone of your eyes. Stone of long fingers.
Stone of you whistling across the room.
The river of love is no less powerful
for all this sorrow. When I am still,
often I choose to go wading here.
I notice how beautiful they are, all these stones,
worn as they are by the currents of love.
I notice how the current never stops.
Let’s Write Love Poems
Posted in Uncategorized on January 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Ah, the art of writing love poems—they can be sensual, practical, sassy, funny or dripping with wild honey. Let’s jump in. In this hour-long thoughtshop, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer will read about a dozen long-stemmed romantic love poems and offer suggestions for how you might write your own. It’s a webinar style class, no participation necessary during the hour, but you’ll come away with lots of inspiration for hot sonnets, open-throated free verse and naked-hearted expressions of longing and love.
Links to the poems and the recording will be sent the next day so you can replay the class on your own schedule and write in your own time.$10-$30 sliding scale
To register, visit here
One Threadbare
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, exhaustion, noticing, wonder on January 20, 2024| 4 Comments »
frayed, this wonder,
the world no less filled
with magnificence
The Medicine of Surrender
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged medicine, surrender, what is on January 19, 2024| 19 Comments »
comes with no spoonful of sugar.
No promises, no back up plans,
no returns, no insurance.
The medicine of surrender
never tastes the way you expect,
never tastes the same next time,
seldom has the hoped for effect.
And if there were some part of you
that thought it might not be affected,
that thought it might hold back,
that part is most likely the first part
to be flooded with the relentless
truth of what is. Oh surrender.
The surest medicine that exists.
There are infinite side effects.
Wonder. Freedom. Rawness.
It’s like opening the dictionary
to the word heaven. Or obliteration.
And knowing it’s the same thing.
It’s like playing spin the bottle with life,
and you French kiss whatever you get.
It’s the only remedy that can help you
be whole. The only real medicine there is.
One After the Disaster
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged destruction, grief, healing, resilience on January 18, 2024| 4 Comments »
years after the tsunami
amidst piles of rubble
strange new blossoms
Woodsy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged candle, hiking, memory, mountain, spruce, trees on January 18, 2024| 8 Comments »
somewhere above Telluride, Colorado
If you close your eyes and just breathe in,
then it’s sixteen years ago and we’re off the trail
roaming through damp autumn woods.
The duff is soft with needles, moss,
and the air is scented with resinous spruce—
fresh and woodsy, tangy, bright.
Sun filters into the evergreen glade
to kiss the clearing with light. Remember, love?
Whatever dreams we brought in with us,
they, too, came to smell of earth, forest,
musk and shade. The mountains
had their way with us that day.
We said little, but by the time we left,
shadow-drunk and gloriously map-less,
everything had changed.
Reframe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awake, Eva Cassidy, insomnia, sleep, song on January 16, 2024| 8 Comments »
Some sleepless nights I imagine
Eva Cassidy might arrive in my room
with her old guitar and she’d sing to me,
her haunting notes draping
the air above me
like a humble and much loved quilt,
and I would curl little girl-like
into her lush and love-strung tones,
her clear voice a pure bell
ringing every jumbled thing
from my worry-cluttered mind.
I’d probably try to resist closing
my heavy lidded eyes.
What a gift it would be then
to stay awake.
Amazing Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged control, grace, grief, will on January 15, 2024| 13 Comments »
At what point in the avalanche
do we realize there’s nothing
to be done but be pummeled
and tumbled and broken
by the world?
At what point do we know
that no matter how hard we swim,
the current will carry
us over the falls and
to the rocks below?
At what point are we sure
we can’t save our beloveds,
not from the world and not
from themselves?
In that moment,
and perhaps only then,
grace comes in to do
what the will cannot,
and whatever it is
that is larger than us
makes a home in us.
If we survive it,
sometimes it stays.
An Opening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clarity, grief, perspective, reframe, snow, snowstorm on January 15, 2024| 4 Comments »
Mourning settles in like a midwinter storm,
clouds low, snow thick in the trees,
snow thick on the rooftops, thick
in the road where you’re forced to go slow
if you go anywhere at all—
squall after squall of thick fat flakes falling
till they break the boughs and thickly cover
the whole visible world
and then,
a parting, a lifting,
a clearing so startling, so blue you swear
you will never see the same way again,
not the snow, not the sky, not even yourself,
having as you do now, some small hint
of the weight of this life.