Only when I stop hiking
do I finally see the flowers
of the wild blueberries,
first one, then five, then
they are everywhere—
everywhere! How did I
miss all the tiny pink bells
that will soon become
dark sweet fruit? How often,
in my haste, do I miss
what is right here, the thing
I most long to see? Once
I start seeing the blueberry
flowers, I can’t stop seeing
them. Sometimes it’s like
this with kindness. With peace.
With beauty. With love.
Archive for June, 2025
Sacred Pause
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, fruit, hiking, noticing, pause, wildflowers on June 30, 2025| 2 Comments »
A Letter Sent Back in Time to Schumann
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged music, Schumann on June 29, 2025| 10 Comments »
I wish you could have heard it, Robert,
your Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major played
tonight in a home in the San Juan Mountains.
I know you heard it many times—heck,
played by Clara and by Mendelssohn—
but I think you would have loved it tonight,
the way the cello resonated through the old
wood floor and into the soles of my feet,
the way my husband smiled through
the whole scherzo, the way birdsong
filled the silences between each movement,
the way the whole evening was cradled
by the scent of evergreens and the low pink glow
of the sun. It was exuberant, Robert, the kind of ecstatic
beauty so desperately needed now when humans
turn against each other so quickly.
We need something “splendid, full of vigor
and freshness” just as much as you must have
back in 1842. I wish you could have seen it,
the way the audience rose to our feet,
thrilled by the music, the musicians, the night.
I wish you could have heard it, the applause,
the ovation. I wish you could read this letter
while you’re in the sanatorium, wondering
what it was all for. What do any of us know
of sanity? You wouldn’t believe what the world
is like now. But I know, Robert, one way to deal
with the ache of the world is with beauty, and friend,
it’s still happening, the craziness and
the drive to find hope in music. It’s still
happening, your music in rooms small and grand.
It’s still happening, the agony, the love.
Just When I Ache with How Much Humans Can Hate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bloom, dark, flower, garden, primrose, service on June 28, 2025| 8 Comments »
Nina takes me by the hand
and runs with me through the garden,
earthen angel in a pale green skirt,
her long silver hair flies behind her,
and I laugh as she tugs me
past snap peas, arugula, broccoli,
and red lettuce leaves. We duck
beneath the rose-covered bower and
emerge into the open lawn, pass deep,
deep purple clematis, to enter another
garden where the evening primrose
flowers that bloom for only one night
are blooming, eight bright
yellow blooms! For each of them,
this is the night. It’s so fleeting,
this beauty. So fleeting, this life.
Long after I leave the garden, I think
of Nina tending these primroses—
so much work for such brief joy.
Or is the secret to know the work
itself is the lasting spark—putting
ourselves in service to something
that blooms in the dark.
One After a Long Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, broken heart, rain, yes to the world as it is on June 27, 2025| 3 Comments »
somehow, the broken heart
finally stops trying
to fix its cracks—
how cool, how brisk
the rain it once tried to keep out
Intention
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged intention, new, wonder on June 26, 2025| 2 Comments »
To wonder. To wonder with no plan
for where it might lead. No strategy
for arrival. No finish line. No pot
of gold. No perfect score. No striving for.
To wonder. To wonder the way a small child
might wonder when seeing a roly poly for the first time—
oh, look at all those legs. Look at how
it curls! Look how it moves again. Feel
how light it is in the palm. Feel how
it tickles as it moves. Imagine
an awareness that new meeting a life form that old.
Can I be that new as I meet this infinite world?
To wonder not just with my mind
but with my belly. To let every neuron
spark. To notice where there is a channel
and imagine the great wing of life
is scraping it clean so the stream might flow
in new ways. To wonder beyond the edge
of the known, and in that spaciousness, play.
The Same Day the Military Leader Said, “We Will Respond with Force”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged peace, war, woods on June 25, 2025| 3 Comments »
There was a moment in sun-dappled woods
when I felt held by the peace that blooms
in the lungs, then spreads to limbs, to mind,
the peace that comes when I turn toward
the throbbing ache of hate and war
and don’t pretend pain isn’t here
and don’t deny beauty, either.
Amidst the peace of the quiet woods,
I wanted more, more peace
that spreads from woods to breath.
More peace, as if peace could be shared
like cake or bread or shelter or song.
I wanted to share it everywhere,
more peace that makes the mind a glade
with gentle light and ample shade.
How could I not want peace to spread
to war-torn homes in war-torn lands,
to war-torn hearts and war-torn hands.
So deep the peace of the sun-dappled woods.
And still I wish for more.
When I say, I miss you
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, missing, mother, parenting on June 24, 2025| 2 Comments »
I mean there’s a silence
here where your voice should be,
an emptiness beside me
where your warmth is not.
I mean your cereal bowl
is not in the sink.
No scent of lavender candles
burning in your room.
I might say, I miss you,
but it’s code
for I miss who I am
when you are here.
Miss giggling until we fall
on the floor. Miss
the way my fingers
pull through your hair.
Miss holding your feet
while you sit in a chair—
that strange thing
that only we do.
I say, I miss you,
but I mean I miss
you humming the Eagles
while making chia seed pudding.
I miss the here of your hand
in my hand. I miss the here
of your feet on the floor,
I miss the here of your eyes.
The here of your sneeze.
The here, right here, of your sigh.
The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, connection, love, trust on June 23, 2025| 12 Comments »
The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World
It was the boy at baggage claim who started it.
His elation! Each time a new bag would drop,
he would point at the suitcase and squeal,
then turn to his grandmother with incandescent delight.
His grandmother deepened my joy. How she beamed
at her grandson, praised him in Spanish, her words
a bright blur I interpreted more through hunch
than through certainty. And sooner than you’d think,
I fell in love with every single person at baggage claim sixteen.
Didn’t need to know their stories to know
they were worthy of love. Everyone a grandchild.
Everyone a light. It was like, how on these midsummer
nights, the late sun shines long though the cities and fields
and everything, every whole and broken thing, is beautiful.
Oh, people of Iran. Israel. Palestine. Ukraine.
Russia. Somalia. Yemen. America. I will never know you,
yet I honor how you carry inside you your own strange
and beautiful spark. Each of us longs to belong.
No matter what our leaders do, the light is right
to see how much we all long to be safe, to be seen,
to be kind, to be trusted, to meet on any street,
in any room, all of us slivers of divinity.
U PICK
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged innocence, joy, news, strawberries, time on June 22, 2025| 6 Comments »
STRAWBERRIES, said the roadside sign,
big red letters on a white-washed board.
We followed the signs to the farmer’s field
and wandered into long green rows,
one stiff blue carton my hands. Such blessing
to kneel on the ground and gather
ripe red sweetness with our fingertips,
to pull the small fruits into our mouths
and hum as their sun-warmed flesh turned
to juice on our tongues. How simple
to smile, thinking of nothing but finding
the deepest red berries, praising
our backroad luck. Oh innocent minutes
spent only in joy, forgetting for a moment
how everything is fragile. Later, the news
came crashing in. Such difficult news.
But for those moments, we lived in such
generous sweetness, such abundant
red sweetness, such wholly shared sweetness,
the kind of sweetness so real that while
you’re in it, you slip out of time
and mistake sweetness for eternity.
For Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being, nothing, self, song on June 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »
a solstice song
Nothing to do but open,
nothing to do but close,
nothing to do but undo,
nothing to do but love.
Self as wind in the forest,
yes, self as both forest and wind,
self as unfolding unself
that closes and opens again.
The Precious Matter of Love–from RISKING LOVE
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Risking Love on June 19, 2025| 4 Comments »
Welcome to the second single from my new spoken word album, RISKING LOVE, which I co-created with acoustic guitarist Steve Law. Release date: July 18. We’re so excited to share these poems with you! Sometimes flirty. Sometimes raw. Sometimes electric. Always wildly alive. It’s an intimate album that explores how we might fall more deeply in love with the world as it is, even when that seems impossible. You can listen to this single on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, or anywhere you listen to music. You can pre-purchase the album on Bandcamp. And you can join us at our release party–free!–on July 18, 3 p.m. mountain time, on zoom. This amazing video was made by Holiday Mathis–if you want her to make videos for you, too, check her out and ask to be on her waitlist. We’ll be releasing videos every Friday for the next 14 weeks! Please watch them, like them, share them with your friends. We made these love poems for you!
And if you want to watch the first single, “Safety Net,” visit here.
Praise Song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, praise, song, thunder on June 19, 2025| 2 Comments »
I went outside to sing a song to the thunder
as the thunder sang through the graying sky,
and while I was singing a secret song,
the thunder sang through me.
I went out to sing a song to the thunder
as it rumbled through the expanded air
and the thunder entered the rain and the earth
and the thunder entered me.
I went out to sing a song to the thunder,
and I was also the thunder.
And the thunder was also the branch and the pond
and the thunder was also me.
I went out to sing a song to the thunder
and there was nothing that was not thunder—
not even the silence, not even the song,
yes, even the longing to sing.
All at Once
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, fear, night, paradox, worry on June 18, 2025| 8 Comments »
Walking alone into the dark,
my fear comes with me.
I feel it small and hard
in my belly like a tiny grenade
the mind has conjured
in case I need protection.
Meanwhile, all around me
the night is peaceful.
The dark spills its generous ink
into every open space.
Crickets rub their legs in bright music.
The misty rain makes no sound.
But the mind is not convinced
the night is safe. It clenches tighter
around its fear. It does no good
to tell the mind not to worry.
Hello, tiny grenade.
I carry it with me as I walk
through a field of fireflies—
and I’m laid bare by the beauty
I find there—thousands of glittering sparks.
Isn’t it a marvel how a person
can be both clenching and opening
at the very same time
while moving alone through the dark?
Noticing the Noticing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, holding, infinite, language, meditation, paradox on June 17, 2025| 6 Comments »
When I am most still,
there is something that holds me—
not a being, but a voice,
no, not a voice, but a transmission.
Not really a transmission, no, but a place
with gradations of color, almost like sky at dawn.
Well, no, not a place. More a placelessness.
A placelessness that holds me.
Yes. A placelessness. That holds me.
Or rather, a placelessness that is me.
And is also all that I’m not.
Oh, these words that try so hard to say something true.
They feel so small as they leave my mouth.
Like I’m tossing out tiny pebbles
into the pool of the infinite.
I stare at the tiny ripples they make,
in awe of their insufficiency.
Which is to say I’m in awe
of all that does not ripple.
With awe comes stillness.
The kind of stillness that invites me.
Invites me to notice how utterly I am held.
The Big Self Watches the Small Self
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged abundance, parts of self, scarcity, third person, time on June 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Look at her, checking her watch again,
worried there’s not enough time. Not
enough minutes or hours to do all the urgent
or beautiful things she longs to do—
a list that unspools out of each second—
all those things she is certain must be done.
She how she squirms, how she bites her lip,
as if her unease will make time open up
like a peony. Oh sweetheart who I have lived
with for years, who I have sometimes mistaken
for myself, I see you. It is so easy right now
to be easy with you, a relief, really, not to judge you
for your worry, but to love you for how deeply
you care, how much you want to be in service.
There is a time outside of time in which
you exist, this timelessness from which
I am watching you–imagine a lake
with no shore. A night with no dawn.
A self with no sense of where she might end.
One Gift from My Dad
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, Father's Day on June 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »
every time I giggle
though no one else can hear it
inside my laughter, your laughter
PLUS
Three Father’s Day Poems in Telluride Inside & Out
you can read them here.
Wishing a Happy Father’s Day to all the dads❤️❤️❤️
Four Upcoming Online Offerings
Posted in Uncategorized on June 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Essential Vulnerability: A Poetry Thoughtshop Celebrating our Humanness
June 26, 2025 6-7 p.m. MST
Zoom, sliding scale
“Nothing in Nature ‘becomes itself’ without being vulnerable. The mightiest tree’s growth requires soft and supple shoots, just as the hardest-shelled crustacean must first molt and become soft.”
—Gabor Maté in “The Myth of Normal.”
Our emotional vulnerability allows us to grow, to connect, to change. And it can be terrifying. In this one-hour webinar-style thoughtshop, join poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer as she reads and talks about poems that honor and explore softness, insecurity and openness. 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. Sliding scale. Register here. For help registering, please email Sarah Dedmon, sarahcraigheaddedmon@gmail.com.
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The Big Reframe: Poetry as a Tool for Re-Seeing the World
Tuesdays, July 22-August 12 5-7 mountain time
hosted by Kripalu
zoom, recorded, sliding scale
Your perspective matters. How you see the world—the way you meet even the smallest moment—affects everyone and everything in the world around you. The stories you tell yourself and others create the big conversation—what are we doing here? What does it mean to be alive? Practically speaking, how do we change our perspective? How might our stories limit us? How do we re-see what we’ve seen again and again? The poets have something to teach us about perspective—how to find meaning in the moment; how to unlearn what we think we know; how to be infinitely curious; and how to enter into deeper conversations with ourselves, each other, the moment, and the world.
When we meet the moment with a pen in our hands, we change our relationship to the world. We become narrators of our own lives—able to meet the story of the moment in fresh ways. In this four-week playshop (way more fun than a workshop!), we will read and discuss poems that help us re-see the world, and we’ll write and (if you wish) share our own poems, engaging in the powerful practice of showing up, leaning in to the realm of pure potential, and joining our small voices in the big conversation. What will happen when you show up? For more information and to register, visit here.
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The Mystery of Grief: Writing into the Loss
Zoom, hosted by Evermore
Wednesday, July 2, 5-7 p.m. M.T.
When we lose loved ones, writing can be a powerful tool for helping us remember them, helping us re-encounter the world without them, and helping us re-know ourselves as the loss transforms us. In this two-hour online program, Evermore Poet Laureate Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer will offer a few suggestions for writing. Together, we will read poems about grief and discuss them. We will have chances to do our own writing, there will be optional time for sharing what we wrote, and we will have time to reflect on the effect writing has on us.
The poems we read and write won’t be able to hold all the feelings, but they will offer us a way to touch our grief, to connect with the lives and deaths of our loved ones, to give voice to our anguish, to find compassion for each other, to fall in love with the world that is left, to express our heartache, and to explore the landscape of our hearts. Sliding Scale.
If you need an angel ticket or have any questions, please contact jena@evermore.org. Please note that your confirmation email with your link for the workshop will come from Zoom. To register, visit here.
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Stubborn Praise: The Sacred Pause
July 17, 5:30-7 p.m. mountain time
Zoom, recorded, $19
Join poets and friends Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and James Crews for another intimate conversation about poetry, life, creative process, showing up in difficult times and opening to the world as it is. Tonight’s theme is “The Sacred Pause.” Rosemerry will read new work and from her new book, THE UNFOLDING, and James will be sharing poems from his new collection, UNLOCKING THE HEART as well as his forthcoming book, TURNING TOWARD GRIEF.
To register, visit here.
Please
Posted in Uncategorized on June 13, 2025| 19 Comments »
If you are one who has practice
meeting the pain of the world,
we need you.
Right now we need you
to teach us it is possible
to swallow what is weighty
and still be able to rise.
We need you to remind us
we can be furious and scared
and near demolished by injustice
and still thrill at the taste
of a strawberry, ripe and sweet,
can still meet a stranger
and shake their hand,
believing in their humanness.
We need you to show us how
we, too, can fall into the darkest,
unplumbed pit and learn there
a courage and beauty
we could never learn from the light.
If you have drowned in sorrow
and still have somehow found
a way to breathe, please, lead us.
You are the ones with the lanterns we need,
the ones we will use to find our way
back into the refuge of each other’s hearts.