There is inside me a field of pink paintbrush,
lush and unbounded—a riotous blush
no one has planted. It’s rooted and spread
in the places where I am most open.
Nodding pink. Waving pink.
Glorious flourishing stems of pink.
Even when I’m walking concourse T. Even
when I’m at the bank drive through.
Even when I’m waiting at the stoplight.
Even when I’m dull, still I am filled
with lavish meadows of dusky pink,
mounds and mounds of soft dusky pink,
great mountainous expanses of deepening,
opening, surprising pink, the kind of pink
that becomes more pink the longer you look.
It survives even the harshest winters,
always returning with wild and unmanaged
beauty. No one tends it, and yet it thrives.
Not that I deserve it. It’s a damn wonder, really,
a meadow of pink so generous, so vast
I’ll never stop finding new paths.
Archive for July, 2025
Inner Landscape
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Colorado, inner landscape, mountains, paintbrush, wildflower on July 31, 2025| 2 Comments »
Perspective
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, field, perspective, scarecrow, widen the lens on July 30, 2025| 10 Comments »
If anger is a scarecrow
then let me be a field
that sprawls across the roads
and beyond the hills.
Sure, the scarecrow
is frightening. But it belongs.
And the field, look, it goes
on and on and on.
Dressing for the Wedding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arms, body image, dress, mother, strength on July 29, 2025| 21 Comments »
She doesn’t want to wear short sleeves, she says,
because they will show her “old woman arms.”
Sometimes worry is just another word
for wanting to be loved just as we are.
I want to remind her how her arms
have been cradles and rocking chairs.
They’ve been cranes that lifted children
and grandchildren high. Her arms
have been levers and ladders and lifeboats.
They’ve been flagpoles and bridge makers
and chapels. Her arms kneaded the dough of my life
and still hold me when I am tired, broken,
scared, depressed. I hope she wears a sleeveless
dress for no other reason than to show
the whole world how her arms are still
in service to love, and damn, how they can flex.
In the Airport, I Wonder about Enough
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enough, fear, helplessness, kindness on July 28, 2025| 8 Comments »
Could they ever be enough,
these stumbling attempts
to bring kindness to an aching world?
Enough, this holding the door for a stranger,
this saying I’m sorry, this holding a place in line?
How could it be enough, asks the ache,
when today I saw the photo of the mother
holding the starving child in Gaza,
his brown legs as thin as my wrists.
I am sick with helplessness.
What does it mean, enough?
Beside me on a bench,
a man I have never met is humming.
His tune blooms like a sun in my chest.
The warmth twines with the beat of my question,
How could any small act be enough?
Until the child in the photo and all children
are safe and fed and loved and held by loving mothers
who are safe and fed and loved
and held by loving others who are safe
and fed and loved—until then,
how could anything ever be enough?
The old man beside me has started to sing.
His eyes are closed, and his
low gentle voice braids beauty
into everything around him.
Even the questions that will never
have answers. Even this terrible ache.
How deeply I want to believe
it is not too late to save this world.
One Doable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged building, enough, house, insufficiency, small steps on July 27, 2025| 10 Comments »
living in a leaning building—
still, she straightens
the picture on the wall
The Uptight Scheduler Writes to James Crews
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged james crews, relaxing, schedule, time on July 26, 2025| 15 Comments »
Remember the morning when you and I
were leading a retreat in the old white church
with the bell that still works and it was nine oh three,
and you turned to me and said,
Let’s give folks a little more time to settle.
And I, who had been longing to ring that old bell
since eight fifty six so we could start on time,
well, I sat down at the gingham cloth covered table
and leaned back and stretched my legs,
let my empty hands rest in my empty lap
and a spaciousness entered my limbs
the way the scent of coffee fills the kitchen.
I felt it all day—a new looseness inside the hours.
There are moments when we are ready,
perhaps, to learn a new way to meet a day,
and you, on that morning, with your quiet voice
and unhurried step, you gave the one-sentence sermon
I most needed to hear. Time went from constraint to gift.
All around us people chatted and laughed.
I didn’t fixate on nine oh four and nine oh five.
Instead, I opened like a clock without a hand
and became part of that happy, eager noise.
Growing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, garden, summer, tending on July 25, 2025| 3 Comments »
for James & Brad
In late July, if you’re lucky, you wander
through the flower gardens your friends
have been nurturing for years—red beds
of bee balm and yellow mounds of St. John’s Wort,
long purple spears of butterfly bush
and thick golden stands of rudbeckia,
and all around you the buzzing, the humming,
the pollinators thrumming, the weaving
of bees and the braiding of birds
and somehow, standing in this thriving place
so lovingly tended and mindfully grown,
you are flooded with admiration for your friends
so great you disappear into the fullness
and emerge with new roots of your own,
one more living thing shaped by the care
and kindness they bring to the world.
New Video Release for RISKING LOVE
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cinepoem, Risking Love on July 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »
It is so surprising what brings us together–not only beauty, but our darknesses, too, both literal and metaphorical. “The Long Marriage” is the seventh track on RISKING LOVE, a spoken-word album that explores how we might fall more deeply in love with the world as it is, even when that seems impossible. We just released the album on July 18, 2025. Audio by Steve Law. Video by Holiday Mathis. Please, watch the video (below) and share it. We made this for you!
To purchase RISKING LOVE, visit here.
To download it or listen on Spotify, visit here.
To download it or listen on Deezer, visit here.
Video and Audio Releases from RISKING LOVE to Date
Safety Net
The Precious Matter of Love
I Want an Interlude with Mr. Clean
Into the Questions
For the One Who Is Gone
In Case You Don’t Know Already
The Long Marriage
The Long Marriage
Perhaps I know you best in the dark—
that nightly shrine
where my belly meets your spine,
where the bend of my knees
meets the bend of your knees,
where my warmth meets your warmth,
the night a vase
in which we place
the stems of our bodies,
in which we flower
through touch.
And nothing must be said
and nothing must be done
except to meet the long familiar nakedness.
Perhaps I know you best in the dark—
these lightless hours when
we sit in the midst of brokenness
and my hand finds your hand,
and my silence finds your silence,
my loss finds your loss,
and together, somehow,
we find a trustworthy peace.
And nothing can be said.
And nothing can be done
to change the past.
We meet in these darkened hours,
with nothing but our willingness
to meet these darkened hours,
these hours we would have pushed away
these hours that bring us closer to each other.
Learning to Treasure What’s Here
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, garden, gratefulness, life, rose on July 23, 2025| 6 Comments »
I believed I had lost it,
the rose bush I planted last year,
what, with the way it died back
after that hard spring frost.
Died all the way to the ground.
Every stem turned brown.
Was it for hope or laziness
I didn’t dig out the roots?
This year, the rose stayed dead
until one day, green. More green.
Then burgeoning, vibrant green.
And now flowers, so many flowers,
flowers of palest pink. The scent
greets me at the garden gate
every time I enter. How precious
it has become to me, this treasure.
Not because I thought it had died,
but because now I remember
it will.
What Can’t Be Lost
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, gift, lost, mother, spoon on July 22, 2025| 4 Comments »
Again I search the drawer
for my small silver spoon
with the Space Needle
on the handle, the one
my mother bought me
when I was not yet two
and we lived in Seattle.
How I loved that spoon,
bringing it with me everywhere
I’ve moved—to college, grad school,
to the top of a mountain,
to a low river valley. I love
the shape of it, sure,
the way the bowl of the spoon
is pointed and shallow,
perfect for small bites
of vanilla ice cream.
Mostly, what I love
is thinking of how my mother,
who had so little then,
wanted to buy her daughter
a treasure. It’s been years
since the last time I touched it.
It’s disappeared many times,
my own young children as enamored
with the spoon as I, and so
I have found the spoon behind the couch
or beneath their beds or left outside
on the arm of a lawn chair,
sometimes even back in its slot
in the drawer.
So for years, I’ve assumed
the spoon will return.
To this day, I don’t think of it as lost.
How could I, when every time
I eat yogurt or ice cream or oatmeal,
I look in the drawer for the spoon,
which is to say every day I touch the spoon
with my mind, every day I remember
the way a mother bought her daughter
a treasure, I think of the love, and every day,
even when it’s not here, it’s so here.
Just Before We Say Goodbye
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, letting go, mother, presence, time on July 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The song we’ve been singing
is gone from the air.
We walk in satisfied silence now.
And it’s beautiful,
the trail lined with sego lilies
and purple fireweed.
This morning’s raindrops
cling to leaves.
How easy it is in this moment
to believe in forever,
the wild roses
endlessly blooming,
the sound of your footsteps
keeping time in front of mine.
Sitting in a Circle of Friends
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, laughter, Lisa Issenberg, paradox, togetherness on July 20, 2025| 2 Comments »
We are laughing, and the sound
is sweet as honeysuckle—
the way it clings to the air—
and even as I laugh,
I’m aware of the many wounds
each of these women
have endured, imagining
how often we have wept,
sometimes with each other,
sometimes alone. Knowing
the ache somehow makes
the laughter all the more sweet—
and the joy of it stitches into me
like a golden thread.
I welcome the pierce
as I feel it connect us,
knowing if I tug on this strand
twenty years from now,
it will bring me back to this night
with its warm summer air
and low summer light,
this radiant night sparkling
with a laughter we nourished
for years by loving each other
through all those tears.
Conversation that Didn’t Happen Out Loud While Hiking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, love, marriage, unspoken on July 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »
It was instantly lush,
the way nothing else
was on that hillside,
but as we stepped
into the aspen grove,
what was crisp and
sun-dried in the sun
became gloriously green.
And the scent of it!
The fecund, feral scent
of it! And I understood,
in that moment, how
both can be true
at the very same time—
how the same hillside
can be both dying
of drought and sheltered
by shade. Same as our lives
have been. And though
I did not turn to you
in that moment and say
I love you, I’d like to think
you knew it anyway,
like to think the truth
of how I love you
clings to you the way
dew drops cling
to the leaves of the lupine.
I’d like to think that even
though I didn’t turn around,
you knew what I was thinking,
and you were saying back to me,
yes, I love you, too.
Surprise Gift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged humbling, lavender, weeding, work on July 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »
How quick I was
to curse the weeds
spiking up
through the lavender,
but wanting to remove them
is what it took
to make me pause,
to kneel on the ground
beside the thick
purple mounds
and thrust my hands
again and again
into the slender stems
to untangle and tug.
Now, I almost want
to thank those weeds
for the work.
Long after, the smell
lingered on my hands,
a gift so purple,
so humbling, so sweet.
In Case You Don’t Know Already–New Release from RISKING LOVE
Posted in Uncategorized on July 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »
When you long to let someone know just how bright, how luminous they are … especially when they don’t yet know their own radiance … This poem, written for my daughter Vivian, is the sixth track on RISKING LOVE, a spoken-word album that explores how we might fall more deeply in love with the world as it is, even when that seems impossible. The album, releases TODAY on Spotify, iTunes, and all platforms, and is available for purchase on Band Camp. I wrote the poem. The music is by Steve Law. The video is by Holiday Mathis. You can find the album on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, or anywhere you listen to music. You can 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. Our amazing videos made by Holiday Mathis can be found on Rosemerry’s YouTube Channel on the Risking Love Playlist. We’ll be releasing videos every Friday for the next 9 weeks! Please watch them, like them, share them with your friends. We made these love poems for you!
Other Video and Audio Releases from Risking Love to Date
Safety Net
The Precious Matter of Love
I Want an Interlude with Mr. Clean
Into the Questions
For the One Who Is Gone
When I’m Feeling Serious
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, joy, laughter, mother, wildflower on July 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
Curled up beside me,
my girl studies the laugh
of a man she admires
and the more he guffaws
the more she guffaws,
which of course,
makes me laugh, too,
and soon the evening
is a riotous bouquet
of giggles. I gather
the sound in me like a field
of wildflowers, a pleasure
that reseeds itself,
lovely as lupine, common
as blue flax that thrives
along even the busiest road.
Right in the Middle of the Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fawn, opening, prayer on July 17, 2025| 8 Comments »
There, beside the willows,
two white-spotted fawns
clumsily stepped through
tall summer grass,
and what rose in me
then was such intimate
prayer—not the kind
where I praise or make
requests, but the kind
where my whole being
becomes a deep green field,
wide enough anything
can enter, not only
the fawns but the mountain lion,
not only the willows
but the ones I call weeds,
and all that is asked of me
is that I notice what it’s like
to be, even for a moment,
that open.
The Choosing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, garden, parts of self, self-acceptance, younger self on July 16, 2025| 4 Comments »
Sometimes, when picking flowers
from the garden, I choose not
the showiest blooms, but the snapdragon
with the crooked stem or the pink cosmos
with the slenderest petals or the delphinium
stalk with the fewest blue flowers. Aren’t you lovely,
I say to them as I snip at their stems
and arrange them in a vase, placing them
in the center of my home. In these moments
I am aware of the gangly child I was, crooked-
stemmed and awkward, who longed to be chosen.
I like the way the room feels different
because the flowers are there. I like the way
they change me, too, as if I am saying
to that gawky part of me who felt unlovable,
I choose you. I choose you. I choose you.
The Mother Wonders about Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, daughter, love, refuge on July 15, 2025| 4 Comments »
for Vivian on her 17th birthday
I don’t understand how it is that loving you
asks both everything and nothing from me.
Every day since your birth I have nourished
this love with time, with touch, with words,
and loved you the way I was loved—knowing
there is nothing you could do or be that
could make me stop loving you. I thought
I was making a refuge for you, but
every day since your birth, the love
you’ve given back to me has become
my sanctuary, a place I show up exactly as I am,
with bad breath, with tired arms, with a faulty
memory and dirt in my fingernails and trust
you will love me, too. Every day we build together
the nest of love. Once we wove in fairy houses
and reading books and making up secret handshakes.
Now we weave in cinema and long road trips and
floating on the pond. And trust is the glue
that holds the nest together, even as
it changes every day. It surprises me
the nest of love is less a place and more
a spaciousness inside—not somewhere we go,
more something we are, so even when
we’re not together, the refuge is always within us,
a love that asks nothing and everything,
a home that grows as we both continue to grow.