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.
Archive for July, 2025
Just Before We Say Goodbye
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, letting go, mother, presence, time on July 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »
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.