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.
Archive for June, 2025
For Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being, nothing, self, song on June 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »
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.
*
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.
*
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.
*
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 feral
over 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 one with the crumbs
we need, the ones we will use to find
our way back to the home of our hearts.