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Archive for January, 2024

Choosing the Sorrow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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.

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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

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From Where, This Inner Spring?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 21, 2024| 14 Comments »

Midwinter, the snow on the roof is melting.
Not just a trickle, but a steady pour.
Inside, I feel it, too, a thawing,
a surprising liquescence
as stories about myself
I thought were true
become less solid, less icy,
more current, more flow.
I didn’t even know I was frozen.
I didn’t know I’d created walls
until this unexpected inner spring
arrived out of season
and offered me a glimpse of freedom.
How vast a day is without those stories.
Was it always possible, this openness?
Perhaps we cannot know it
without first experiencing constriction.
Outside, it is melting,
though I know soon the cold will come again.
Inside me, it is melting,
a whole world of ice turning to rivulet.
I fall in love with the sound of melting.
Drip. Drip. Drip.

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One Threadbare

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 20, 2024| 4 Comments »

frayed, this wonder,
the world no less filled
with magnificence

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The Medicine of Surrender

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , 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.

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One After the Disaster

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 18, 2024| 4 Comments »

years after the tsunami
amidst piles of rubble
strange new blossoms

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Woodsy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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.  

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Reframe

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.

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Amazing Grace

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , 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.
 

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An Opening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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.

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