said the ice to the flame
teach me again
to be cloud
Archive for February, 2025
One Not Without Fear
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, courage, porosity, transformation on February 27, 2025| 6 Comments »
Though No One Else Can See It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, love, tattoo on February 26, 2025| 8 Comments »
For a time I thought I wanted
a tattoo to remember you on my skin—
that was before I understood
how your life is already marked
into every cell, every breath,
how there is no part of me
not needled and stained
with your life, your story,
your silence, your presence,
your love, the wonder of you,
your weight in my arms, your name.
For When the Fall Feels Inevitable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anxiety, love, safety, tightrope, wings on February 25, 2025| 6 Comments »
The space
between this
moment and
the next
stretches like
a tightrope—
let my
love for
you be
not net,
but wings.
Some Good News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged goodness, humanity, kindness, news on February 25, 2025| 4 Comments »
It’s like driving over a hill
the day after a flood
only to discover on calm water
a gathering of trumpet swans,
the elegant stretch of their long necks rising,
their white wings spread wide in arrival.
Or like skiing through a vast valley
only to find another trail that leads you
into a grove of elder cedar trees,
their great trunks humbling you,
their balsamic scent opening
in the shade like holy incense.
Yes, that’s what it’s like when,
in a world that feels hostile and hateful,
you arrive in a faraway town full of strangers
who welcome you into warm rooms
filled with bright cloths, with soft guitar,
with fringed yellow tulips in blue vases.
Yes, that’s what it’s like when,
after listening to the firehose of the news,
you meet new friends who speak with you
of moss and making baskets and singing and seeds,
and your heart leaps up like a crocus in spring,
alive with the truth of how good it can be, this life.
Not Exactly Lost Near the Bitterbrush Trail
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lost, nordic skiing, presence, snow on February 24, 2025| 6 Comments »
In the flat, low light
of morning there
is no way to see
the trail in the valley
of snow, and so,
new to this place,
I let myself not know
where I’m going.
I move more slowly,
let myself be led by
the trail as it appears.
Each moment is like
a new invisible map
that proclaims again
and again
You Are Here.
What’s Really at Stake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cascade Mountains, mountains, nature, pine, scent, trees on February 22, 2025| 2 Comments »
I like to live in the scent of pine
on a thaw-some winter morning,
viscous tendrils of tree perfume
thick in the air, scent of evergreen,
yes, but a warmer scent, too,
like honey, like vanilla, like must.
I like the way the scent lives in me
as I move through the tussocks
of snow. I like pulling the tree-sweet air
into my lungs, like thinking of how
even now I, too, am becoming
more tree, as if my shadow side, too,
might soon grow moss. As if I, too,
might begin to grow roots right here
in the moment. As if I, too, might remember
how surely I depend on this earth,
how surely it depends on me.
Self-Talk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, opening, self-compassion, self-talk on February 22, 2025| 10 Comments »
Because I know in my body
the power of spaciousness,
I command my heart, Stay open.
Stay open, I growl,
as it clenches and hardens
and granites and steels,
but my terrified heart
keeps clenching anyway,
tighter and smaller and stuck.
I said, Stay open,
my voice a demand,
as if with intensity
I could force a release.
And the heart curls in,
intent on survival, like a pill bug,
like an armadillo, like a heart
that has learned before
it is not safe to love.
And it hurts to be small.
And it takes so much energy
to clench, that finally
it’s exhaustion that helps me
to hear the softer voice
beneath the command,
the quiet voice that arrives
like the slightest of waves, the voice
that arrives like low morning sun,
and the voice enters the clench of me
like gentle rain meeting dry earth,
and it says, Of course, you’re afraid.
For now it’s enough to remember
the possibility of opening.
How It Is Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, doors, opportunity, possibility, trust on February 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
In every moment, doors appear—
not literal, of course, with knobs and locks,
but metaphoric, yes, with thresholds and casings
and simple invitations I feel
in my body, an architecture of possibility.
I didn’t used to notice them.
Was it because they weren’t there,
or because I simply had not yet learned
to see them? Now I marvel
at how omnipresent they are,
and all they ask of me is that I choose
to step through them or not.
I recognize them more in my body
than with my mind. As if the body
has spent decades learning, oh, this is what
it feels like when a door appears.
As if the mind is at last learning to say
yes, body, I believe you. Now I trust
that I can change everything with
just one step across that invisible
threshold. Or not. Now I know
once I take that step, I can’t return
to the place I had been. And there will always be
another door. Another door. Another door.
After All This Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, beauty, natural world, praise on February 19, 2025| 4 Comments »
my heart still leaps up
for red rock cliffs
that rise from the river,
still thrills at the way
spruce trees grow
(how do they do it?)
out of near vertical walls,
their evergreen branches
bearing the silver
weight of snow.
The older I get,
the greater my wonder.
The older I get,
the more grateful I am
to rise into morning.
The older I get,
the more I want
to offer my breath
in praise of what is beautiful,
resilient and strong.
The turmoil is all around us,
and yet there is so much
that finds a way
not just to survive,
but to shine.
The Great Chorus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, connection, singing, song on February 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
We all live together in a home
in which the rooms are
made of song. Fierce
songs of resistance. Wounded
songs that rise like sirens and
drown out every other song, till
once again, we hear the tendrilled
song of opening. Chants
of freedom. Wild song
of belonging. Sweet lullaby
of trust. What moment cannot
be met through song? Even
the greatest heartache, even
the greatest joy, even
the smallest hope knows
itself not only by its melody, but
by who is willing to sing along and
who is courageous enough to listen.
Poem in Which You Are Storm, I Am Meadow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, love, meadow, snow, time, transformation on February 17, 2025| 6 Comments »
By noon
the snow
that changed
the world
from brown
to white
in just
a day
seems gone—
the meadow
however, remembers
the gift.
Come spring,
there will
be green.
The Turning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ermine, humanity, love on February 17, 2025| 14 Comments »
I can’t think of a more powerful response to life’s sorrows than loving.
—Suleika Jaouad
When stories of the selfishness of humans
stain my thoughts like spilt gray ink, when
proofs of our cruelty grab me by the chest
and squeeze, squeeze until it hurts to breathe,
when I lament what we’re capable of,
this is when I most need to remember
it is also human to love.
Like today, when crushed by a thoughtless act,
I found myself atop a snow-covered pass
where I almost missed the sleek, white body
leaping across the vast white field,
and that chance spotting, that wonder,
that luck was all it took to fall in love again
with this world that somehow created a creature
that changes colors twice a year,
a creature that runs easily atop deep, new snow.
And as love raced through me
like a winter-white ermine, I, too,
was able to not sink in, to not get stuck
in what feels cold, dense and bottomless.
This was not a moment that will change the world,
but in this moment, loving the world changed me—
made me more than my fear and sadness,
turned me again toward the miracle.
Somehow Inside This Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, forever, mother, now, puzzle, time on February 16, 2025| 4 Comments »
Every day has something in it whose name is Forever.
—Mary Oliver, “Everything that was Broken”
The snow falls forever
into deepening drifts
and forever the mother
and daughter are fitting in
pieces of a puzzle that is
forever unfinished
and the cat purrs forever
in the lap of the girl
who is laughing forever
about the smallest
of things and the song
on the radio lasts forever
and the mother harmonizes
though forever she forgets
the words, and her tea
is forever not quite warm
in this sweet buried day
that she prays will last
forever though she knows
the other name for forever
is now, and now the snow
has stopped falling
and now the cat is asleep,
but how is it that
as the mother goes
to brush her teeth those
strands of forever have
stitched themselves into
her being and she carries
them into her dreams
with infinite other threads of forever,
even as forever carries her.
Love Poem to the Things I Never Dreamt I Could Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, love, opening on February 15, 2025| 4 Comments »
Here’s to the eggplant that once made me retch.
I would never have believed I would crave you.
And here’s to skiing. I remember the concussion,
the night train, and now, in my blood, the elation.
Here’s to ranch dressing, which for years I called goop.
And here’s to black licorice, which I now I call bliss.
And here’s the to the night, which once frightened me.
Here’s to fiction. Coffee. Country music.
It feels good tonight to remind myself
how completely things can change.
Like how a woman who thought she could never
wear patterns now wears striped socks
and polka dot gloves. Sometimes what we love
changes so completely we can’t imagine our minds
and hearts were once so small. Tonight I dream
of what else might change. For me. For you. For us all.
One Valentine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged intimacy, love, scent on February 13, 2025| 8 Comments »
in a room full of roses
my favorite scent
your skin
Even in a Time of Intolerance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, change, intolerance, kindness, love, responsibility on February 13, 2025| 17 Comments »
“We all have a part in shifting the story.”
—Joy Harjo, 23rd US Poet Laureate
There is, in an overfull classroom,
a woman teaching not only history,
but compassion. There’s a barista
making hearts in the foam
of every cappuccino she serves.
There’s man helping another man
on crutches as he struggles to cross
the icy street. There’s a library room full of women
chanting about praying for their enemy.
There are students raising money
to help those with breast cancer and AIDS.
Two girls are laughing for the joy of laughing
’til their faces are tear-streaked
and their ribs and bellies are sore.
There’s a poet who pours courage and music
into every word she shares with the world.
And another woman hears those words
and thinks, “Me. That poet is talking to me.”
This is how we change the world one kind act,
one true word, one long laugh at a time. Because
now, that woman is ablaze with wondering:
What is my part in shifting the story?
Two Worlds, One Dancer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged how to meet a day, opposition on February 12, 2025| 6 Comments »
I love the dark, and yet
my body wholly melted
this morning the moment
sunlight entered the room,
as if my limbs were made to receive
that warmth. Even moss,
which desperately needs
the dark, also needs the light.
How did we ever believe
we could survive without
embracing both?
Everywhere I turn,
the teaching to straddle
two opposite worlds, to find
a way to walk with one foot
in one world, one foot in the other.
No. Not just to walk that way.
To dance.
Join Me for a Thoughtshop on Falling in Love with the World in a Difficult Time
Posted in Uncategorized on February 11, 2025| 2 Comments »
Sorrom: n. a paradoxical praise for beauty, love, strength and connection that can only emerge as we wrestle with devastation, grief and the worries and pains of daily living;
a positive side-effect of surrender and trust in life and death
from sorrow + om (from Hindu religions and Buddhism), originally indicating assent or agreement, pronounced “sahr-om”
Sometimes, in our most desperate moments, we find an impossible invitation—the invitation to praise. How can this be? How, in our most desperate moments, can we celebrate some aspect of life? And how, is it possible (?), can we celebrate the desperation itself? In this one-hour webinar-style thoughtshop, join poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer as she reads and talks about poems that do the impossible—find praise in the midst of suffering. She will then offer invitations for you to do your own writing later. There will be time for questions and responses. After the event, all who register will receive a link to the recording, links to the poems she reads, plus the writing invitations
To register, visit here.
Perception: A Sonnet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, perspective, sonnet, walking on February 11, 2025| 8 Comments »
I take a walk with my whirling thoughts
and the near-full moon and the dark,
and for a time, all that seemed large
in me is no less large, but it’s also a dot,
a blip when compared to the whole
of the night, as if the entirety of my life
and the life of my country and the life
of the earth could all fit in a fourteen-line poem
with two lines left blank. Because nothing I write
seems to touch how vast, how sublime it is—
the snow moon rising above red cliffs—
only space can convey how humbling it is, the night.
.
Widening the Vision
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, multitudes, perspective, rabbit, vision on February 10, 2025| 12 Comments »
Almost by accident
I saw through the blaze
of my anger and fear
to the bunny in the yard,
his sweet brown body
so still and attentive
in the short brown grass,
and it’s not that I
became any less angry,
but when I let myself be held
by his steady brown eye,
I was touched by gentleness
and remembered what else
I am capable of. Oh self, this
is how you stay whole hearted—
by keeping your eyes wide open.