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Archive for October, 2024

No Matter What They Say

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 11, 2024| 14 Comments »

You do not have to get over it.
You will carry your grief
and be carried by loss
in any way the carrying happens.
As if you had a choice.
Grief builds rooms inside you
no one else will ever see,
rooms with doors
only you can pass through
filled with songs or silence
only you can hear.
Rest here. Or dance here.
Shout. Or whisper. Rise
like milkweed seeds on the wind.
Or lie. Here, you can only do it right.
Here, there are no other eyes
or ears to tell you what to do
or how long it will take
or what choices to make.
And if you are weeping, weep.
And if you are dry, you are dry.
The rest of the world
can talk about stages
of grief and how it should be,
but you, you do not have to listen.

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Cicada

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 10, 2024| 4 Comments »

Fear lays its eggs
in the grooves
of my thoughts
where they hatch
and feed on
the juice of my joy,
then dig to my roots
and eat those, too,
till they emerge
and grow wings
and sing and sing
and ceaselessly sing
to each other
using their bodies
as chambers
and I can’t escape
their song—
sometimes
when I listen,
I tremble
and the ache
makes me feel—
how can this be—
impossibly
more alive.

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One Driving to the Airport at 4 a.m.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 9, 2024| 2 Comments »



the empty highway
stretches through the dark—
a music staff with one long note

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On the Night Before Your Surgery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on October 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »

while one hand
brushes my teeth,
the other reaches
to your room far away
to cradle your heart
as you sleep

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Waking Up on October 7

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 8, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
 
From six hundred miles away,
the smoke arrives to fill the air here
and I wake to the scent of burning,
wake to the haze of what was once
tree and weed and home and flesh.
I cannot fathom the stories that enter me
with every breath.
Let the ears do what the nose does—
be sensitive to stories beyond this room,
beyond this canyon, this region, this nation.
There are so many ways we burn.
I want to listen beyond words,
listen the way the heart can
only when its walls are down.
I want to listen to the world
the way the nose takes in the news
of the distant Bighorn Mountains,
how it wakes me up and scrapes me out,
lighting a fire in me, wildly aware
of how vast the world is,
filled with terror and courage.
I can make the world so small sometimes,
hearing only the story of me.
But today on the wind,
I can’t not know how connected we are.
Though it isn’t easy, though it frightens me,
this is how I want to listen.

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Ways to Listen: An Incomplete List

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on October 6, 2024| 10 Comments »

There’s lonely listening, when
sitting in a crowd. Open listening
as one listens, eyes closed,
to the wind in the cottonwood leaves.
Numb listening, as one listens
to detergent commercials.
Baffled listening, as one
tries to discern if the speaker could
possibly believe what they say.
And full-body listening as
the cello plays. Sometimes,
I’ve felt my whole being break
with delight in joyful listening
to my daughter’s laughter.
And break equally
with the unbearable listening
as the soil falls on the casket.
There’s the holy listening
when we listen for the dead,
and greedy listening,
in which every other utterance
is merely a ladder rung
for stepping into your own story.
Selfless listening knows only to receive.
There’s the way you sometimes listen to me,
as if my words are waves on the river,
not something to interpret,
but something familiar.
And the way you sometimes listen
to my silence and know precisely
what I mean. There’s nervous listening,
as one listens to the mouse in the wall.
And vast listening, like when on a clear night
lit only by stars, I can almost sense
how the universe not only sings
through my body, but listens, too,
listens to itself, and knows itself
in the listening.

after reading “As One Listens to the Rain” by Octavio Paz and “Speaking and Language” by Paul Goodman

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Positive Side Effect of Exhaustion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 6, 2024| 8 Comments »

Inside me fear and delight take a nap.
They have wearied each other
with their wrestling. Look how sweet
they are there, curled into each other
like two cats, one white, one black.
Look how their chests rise and fall
in unison, as if they can’t help
but attune to each other—
like two heart cells
that can’t help but sync.
The moment I’m more awake
they will be at it again,
pouncing, batting, tussling.
But for now, the easy duet of their purr,
the limp weight as they curl deeper in
as if for once there’s no question
they both belong.

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Changing Rhythm

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 4, 2024| 8 Comments »

 
At the edge
of the field
was the bank
where the boy
used to stand
and throw rocks
for the joy
of the splash
and now
his mom
stands there
alone
sometimes
she throws
a rock,
surprised
each time
when the joy
of the splash
is still there.

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Unfolding Our Grief: A Conversation with Raghu Markus on Mindrolling on the Ram Dass Network

Posted in Uncategorized on October 4, 2024| Leave a Comment »



I loved talking with Raghu Markus about my new book, The Unfolding. It’s almost like a Rorschach test to see which interviewers choose which poems! And what a delightful and openhearted hour of conversation we had touching on experience opposite feelings at the same time, understanding how much we need each other, brave prayers, what makes us grow, how grief strips us bare and the gifts of that, and much more. You can watch or listen here … also available anywhere you listen to podcasts. 

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The Courage to Say Yes – A Conversation with Tara Brach and poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 3, 2024| 4 Comments »



I have long been inspired by Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance, meditation teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC, and it was, well, nothing short of thrilling to get to talk with one of my heart heroes for an hour about my new collection, The Unfolding. We begin by talking about my poetry practice and the death of my son, Finn, and then for the rest of the hour we read poems from the new book and talk about self-compassion, opening to what is difficult and beautiful, and saying yes to life.

You can watch the video here, listen to the podcast on Apple podcasts here, or here you will find links to other podcast platforms.

You can buy The Unfolding from my local bookstore here if you want a signed copy (through Nov. 1) and they will ship it to you. (In the comments section at checkout indicate to whom you want the book signed)

You can buy the book from online stores by visiting here

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So I Spend It Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 3, 2024| 8 Comments »




Before sleep, I touch it again,
that moment this morning
when I slipped out before sunrise
and sat in the pale blue light
and watched a lone heron
trace the curve of the river
before disappearing behind
golden cottonwoods.
It lasted, what, three seconds?
But those instants of awe
have returned to me again
and again like a coin I spent
on something beautiful
only to find, by what miracle?
it returns to burn a hole
in my pocket again.


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Looking at the Books Behind Jack and James

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 2, 2024| 15 Comments »


                  for Jack Ridl and James Crews
 
 
In the zoom room with Jack and James,
I stare at the books behind them—
books stacked, books shelved,
books slender and thick,
and I think of how we’re all shaped
by words we’ve read. For me,
the wooden love sonnets of Neruda.
The wanderings of Ammons. The wounds
of Olds. The wonder of Oliver.
The playfulness of cummings.
The ravages of Amichai and Darwish.
And oh, how I’ve been touched
by these two men—
their mornings with coffee and tea.
Jack’s dog. James’s flowers.
The ways they fill their hours
with kindness. With silence.
With peeling back the layers
of family and home and self.
If there were shelves inside me,
you probably wouldn’t find
their books there—more likely
strewn about on the heart’s couch,
the mind’s floor. I carry them
with me into each inner room,
Jack’s walks, James’s bees,
and daily, they become me.
And all those books on their shelves
that have formed these men
into the humans they are,
I thank all of those poets, too.
How deeply entwined we all are.
How many lives and poems we bring with us
each time we enter a room.

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The Misophonic Poetry Teacher Is Confronted by the World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 1, 2024| 17 Comments »


 
 
I would rather not listen to the dehydrator fan
as it hums in the back room, a sound
some might call white noise, but
I hear it as if it’s neon bright whirring inside me,
as if I, too, am being dried
like thin slices of Bartlett pear,
as if I, too, am losing all my juice
and becoming a shriveled version of myself.
And now the roar of a distant plane layers
above the dehydrator hum like a rogue choir member
with poor pitch insisting on a solo.
Enter the crinkle of the chip bag
as my good husband comes into the kitchen
to become a human vector for crunching.
And now it’s all assault: the cat as she mewls,
the lumber trucks thundering by like subwoofers,
the gurgle and burble of the fish tank pump—
and I’m the fool who minutes ago said to the class,
Let’s be receptive and hear with our whole body,
believing I might fall more in love with the world
just by listening into this moment like the poet
we just read who wrote about the sweet communion
she achieved just by quietly listening to the bees
as they swirled around her in a baptism of holy buzz,
but damn, it’s so loud, and overwhelmed
with the racket of it all, I whisper-shout oh fuck it,
joining my curse to this collective clamor of thwack
and drip and rumble and tick, and I’m part
of it all, though not how I’d planned, invited in
by each thing relentlessly singing itself into being,
all of it beckoning me, too, to sing, sing, sing.

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