In the dark, she finds her way to me,
this cat who never deigns to sit
on my lap in the day.
I delight in this moment
when, just before sleep takes me,
I feel the thump of her landing,
the exploratory nudge of her head,
the tentative paws as they knead
into the covers, into my belly,
I love being the place
she chooses to rest—
in the moment, this honor
as important as any degree,
any title, any prize.
It’s so easy then, to love my body
when I am her cushion,
my softness in service
to her softness, my warmth
in service to her warmth,
my breath her rocking chair.
And any harshness I might
have for myself softens
in this humble moment
when I am deemed worthy
of her weight, this heavenly heaviness,
her sweet purr into my ribs
so quiet not even
the night can hear.
Archive for February, 2024
Nightly Encounter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, falling asleep, worthiness on February 29, 2024| 14 Comments »
Like the Peony
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blossom, peony, resilience, vulnerability on February 27, 2024| 12 Comments »
Like the peony that opens
and opens and opens,
this is how I want to meet life—
surviving the cold
then returning to bloom
again. Again.
That vibrant. That many-petaled.
Embarrassingly fulsome,
as if life just can’t
get enough of itself.
Truth is, life cuts you to the ground
and you lose all but the roots.
Sometime you lose those, too.
How is it, then, comes
the chance to bloom again,
to be less master of life,
and more servant to the life
that pushes through.
I want to be fluent in blooming.
I want to trust the possibility
of sweet spring perfume
as much as I trust
the inevitability of frost.
I am so grateful for beauty,
albeit brief,
for the chance to be naked,
tender, soft.
After Talking About Vulnerability
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged certainty, hats, loss, vulnerability on February 25, 2024| 6 Comments »
I just want something
I can hang my hat on, she said.
But the mortarboard didn’t hang on education.
The government’s white wig fell off.
The tiara slipped from beauty.
The skullcap blew off the church.
No hat she hung could stay.
The ball cap fell off the firm body.
Art couldn’t keep the beret.
Even the mesh net
of the beekeeper’s wide brim
fell away, fell away, it all falls away.
Which is to say nothing stays.
Not the dodo. Not the dino.
Not the houses we live in.
Not our firm young skin.
Not a father, not a son.
Not sunshine. Not rain.
Not empires. Not cats.
Not the first crushing fist of heartbreak.
Not nightmares. Not bruises.
Not hats.
She let herself drift
in what was left, her head bare,
hands empty, heart open,
eyes wide. The sun stroked
her shoulder. She breathed in
the musky scent that arrives
on the wind just before spring.
Nothing was certain. She stood alone
at the edge of every possible thing
no hat in hand, and listened
to the chickadee sing.
Writing with Dante starts Feb. 29
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dante, Kayleen Asbo, workshop on February 25, 2024| 8 Comments »
The Journey Begins with Catastrophe
a one-hour preview of a journey with Dante
Kayleen Asbo & Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
February 29, 11-noon Mountain Time, zoom
How did Dante get to the place where he wrote the Divine Comedy? Have you ever wholly lost your way? Found yourself on the shores of humility? Join me and my amazing and beloved friend Kayleen Asbo, cultural historian, musician, and art historian, for a 60-minute preview of our new collaboration, Writing with Dante, a three-part workshop. This first one-hour program on Feb. 29 is free, though donations are gratefully accepted.
Kayleen will lead us by the hand to explore connect our lives with the psychological landscapes of Dante’s Divine Comedy through a feast of art, music and storytelling. I’ll guide writing and sharing to help weave our conversations, questions and explorations into our own lives.
The series continues:
March 7 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. mountain time, In the Dark Woods: Reading and writing into Dante’s Inferno
April 4 10 a.m – 2:30 p.m. mountain time, The Mountain of Hope: Reading and writing into Dante’s Puragatory
May 2 10 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. Coming Home to a Place of Belonging: Reading and writing into Dante’s Paradise
To register for this free preview, visit here
One Beyond Practical
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, song, umbrella on February 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
for KC
an umbrella of song—
sure we got wet,
but man, did we smile
Beyond Quiet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindfisher, noise, peace, quiet, surrender on February 24, 2024| 6 Comments »
From bare branch to bare branch
Clark’s nutcrackers weave the dry tick
of their call through morning—
as if sticks are rattling,
as if stones are clattering—
and whatever part of me
that is longing for quiet
is invited into the racket.
I say I want peace,
but what the heart really wants
is to know itself
as part of everything,
to belong to the world
of grinding and trilling,
scolding and chattering,
to knit itself into this raucous day,
strident and so alive.
The Teacher
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, Joi Sharp, learning, student, teacher on February 21, 2024| 6 Comments »
for Joi Sharp
In the garden of wisdom,
she did not step in as head gardener.
Instead, she tended her own planting.
She showed me how to weed
the stories we tell ourselves,
how inner spaciousness
is the richest soil for growth.
She did not do the tilling for me.
Inquiry became my hoe.
She offered questions free
as rain water.
And when it was time to sow,
from her own rows she gathered seeds.
She did not do the planting.
She handed the seeds to me.
Saying Yes to the World as It Is: Interview with “Little Gifts”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged interview, Little Gifts, podcast on February 20, 2024| 2 Comments »
I had the GREAT JOY (!) to be interviewed by Sue Ellen Parkinson and her granddaughter Savanna Waterwheel on their podcast “Little Gifts.” I read poems, we talk about my spiritual teacher Joi Sharp, we talk of creativity and practice and opening and grief and love and art and so much more. I loved their thoughtful questions and our soulful conversation. You can listen on Spotify or Apple
Imagining Rose
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged generation, grandmother, nothing, transformation on February 20, 2024| 7 Comments »
Red were the leaves
in that Illinois fall,
red was the blood
she did not bleed,
and brittle was the straw
in the hat she did not wear
as she did not walk
to the store. Instead
she sat on the small
metal chair in her room
and did not cry,
my grandmother all those
years ago, and she
thought of the baby
she would have
with the man who
she married but did
not love, and green
were her thoughts
as the child began to grow,
green as the garden
she did not sow.
She did not yet know
how he would learn
to spin all that
nothing she had
into gold.
One When It Seems Impossible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope on February 19, 2024| 3 Comments »
this surprising hope—
like finding in this old, familiar house
a new room
From Shatter the Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged no, sexual assault, yes on February 16, 2024| 11 Comments »
Dear Friends,
I was so grateful to be invited again this year to participate in a poetry reading against sexual assault int he Teen Love & Consent week at my local high school.
I wrote this poem for those students–because I believe that it is essential that our NO is heard when talking about who has the right to touch our bodies, and I also believe that it is essential to dream of the world we do want. What does it look like, a world of deep respect, equality, kindness? What do I most want to say yes to?
I wept (I know, surprise, surprise) at the candor and valor of the students and teachers who participated. I am so heartened by the courage and strength of our teens.
When We Say No
When we say no, we mean
this body is my forest
and you are now a trespasser here.
We mean I will not be
one of seven hundred thousand people
raped in America this year.
We mean no to all rape,
any year, anywhere.
When we say no, we mean
yes to our choice, we mean yes
to our freedom, yes to our safety,
yes to our peace, yes to our trust
and yes to respect. We say yes
to our own inner flowering—
may we continue to flower.
We say yes to the power of no.
When we say no, we mean
never again. We mean
you have the duty
to not hurt, to not take,
to not cut down our bodies
like saplings. We mean yes
to hope, yes to making it right,
yes to not having to fight
for the right to be safe,
yes to our voices mattering,
yes to the silence shattering,
yes to each of us growing
like a forest, our boundaries clear,
our bodies sacred.
Still Breaking Open
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, losing the self, loss, love on February 15, 2024| 4 Comments »
Surely you know. Surely,
whatever happens to the soul
after we die is capable of feeling
the love of those still living,
can attune to it like a bell.
Tonight, alone, I relish
the chance to miss you—
to miss you so much
I crawl into the missing
the way you once crawled
into my lap and held to me
until the world was nothing
and the holding was everything.
I want to crawl into the love
that still burns in me
and disappear in it,
let it take me completely
until there is nothing left
to burn. I want it
and I don’t want it.
I love this world too much
to want to leave and yet
I want to be so in service to love
that there is nothing left of me
but rampant, self-shattering love.
I want everything but love
to burn to ash. Want everything
but love to be blown away
like dross, like chaff.
Want all that is left of me
to be this feral heart
still opening, though
it seems it couldn’t possibly
break open any more,
yet I marvel as it opens again, again
into, how is it possible?
more love.
In Case You Don’t Know Already
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brilliance, daughter, love, mother, power, sun on February 14, 2024| 10 Comments »
—for my daughter
One day you will wake
and discover you are a sun,
radiant, fueled by your own core,
capable of luminosity so great
you blaze through lightyears of darkness.
You will know your own power
and it will never occur to you
not to trust it, not to share it.
You will not be able to forget
your own magnitude.
Nor will such glory be a burden.
You will simply shine
because that is who you are.
No need to apologize.
No reason to be jealous
of any other sun,
of any other star.
On that day,
you will see how it is
you have always been a sun,
even in the darkest days.
Then, you were also the clouds
and the great shadow
that made you stop
believing in your light.
You are, in fact,
what makes the day itself—
you are that integral,
that crucial,
that bright.
Wings of Wonder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, eagle, falling in love with the world, wonder on February 13, 2024| 8 Comments »
There, in the field,
you catch the flash
of dark brown wings,
the tail a startling white,
just before the great bird
disappears into the pines
and the heart leaps up
at the gift—the thrill.
You almost missed it.
Once you stood
on a long rocky spit
for an hour watching
hundreds of bald eagles
fly and land, swoop and dive.
How is it that only one bird
for only one sliver of a second
could invite a wonder equally strong?
Such strange math—
the way it takes so little
to create a joy so large
so that seeing the eagle,
you lift your arms from your chair
as if you, too, are taking flight,
as if, you, too, might disappear
into the moment and soar.
When Everywhere Is the Right Place to Start
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, dowsing rod, science, trust, water on February 12, 2024| 7 Comments »
It’s like when dowsing rods swing back and forth,
twin tattletales of all we cannot see.
I’ve seen them twitch and cross—a sign that water
is nearby. A sign this spot’s the perfect
place to dig a well. A scientist
would say it’s luck—it’s in the dowser’s walk.
They’d say that everywhere’s the perfect place
to dig when everywhere you go has water.
I know the feel of dousing rods inside
my blood each time I meet a blank page and
then try to say what’s true—my inner rods
will quiver wild or simply sit there, still.
And what a thrill when they say, “Here, dig here.”
It’s more a matter of how deep, not where.
One Big Perspective
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, perspective, sky on February 11, 2024| 2 Comments »
a day so blue
even my greatest fears
are dissolved into sky