Inside us, life
like water leaps up
from the source
to discover itself
in relationship
with light and
air, glittering
as it catches
the sun, changing
its shape in the wind,
returning to source
as one water,
leaping up again.
Archive for September, 2025
Fountaining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fountain, life, water on September 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Welcome
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, parts of self, prickly, returning on September 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Hello prickly part of me.
Welcome to my heart.
Look. In a moment
of bravery, I took down
all the exit signs.
Turns out they were
a pretense, anyway. Sure,
there are still doors,
but what I’ve found—
all doors revolve bringing
all parts of me right back
to right here.
Sit with the Pain in Your Heart, he said,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged greg kimura, meeting the moment, pain on September 28, 2025| 8 Comments »
and I did. In quiet rooms. In restaurants.
On public benches beside the trash cans.
And sometimes I walked with the pain
in my heart. Through aspen forests and
the shade of tight alleys. On crowded city
streets and on long dirt roads. And I danced
with the pain in my heart—danced in
the kitchen and danced in the park
and danced with no music at all. And
I cooked with the pain and I wrote
with the pain and I gardened,
washed dishes and slept with the pain
and the pain was still pain. It did not
change. It still hasn’t changed.
But I did.
*title from a line from Greg Kimura, “Sacred Wine”
While Sitting Near a Lake in Chicago
Posted in Uncategorized on September 27, 2025| 10 Comments »
Taio Cruz sings through the speakers
about lighting up this world like it’s
dynamite and though I can smell
someone grilling onions nearby and hear
the bright clink as waiters set plates
on tables, I am also dancing with my boy
in our living room fifteen years ago, Taio
blasting through the speakers, our hands
in the air as we sing, “We can go all night,”
and I’m looking at the shimmer
of the sun on the water and my son and I
are holding hands and spinning
and the geese are honking, a sharp
strangled sound, and my son and I
are chasing each other around the couch
and when the song changes to some
other tune I don’t know, my boy still here,
with me, dancing inside this moment
where the geese are now quiet, swimming
across the water, the wake behind them
disappearing. Some trails disappear.
Some are alive within us forever.
One Other Version of Heaven
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, city, connection, country mouse, sister on September 27, 2025| 8 Comments »
for my baby brother
peaceful as any mountain meadow,
this chance to walk a city block
with sirens and screeching trains
and flashing lights and car alarms
and my arm tucked tightly into yours
A Little Self-Talk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dirty, feet, imperfection, self-talk on September 25, 2025| 8 Comments »
My god, woman,
your feet. Those
are the dirtiest
heels I have ever
seen. Have you
been mowing
the yard in flip flops
and walking
barefoot in dirt?
For days?
Something
about it makes
me so darn
glad to be
in your skin.
Right Here
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, meditation, quietude on September 25, 2025| 7 Comments »
These autumn afternoons
I find myself in the garden
standing amongst the flowers.
Not deadheading. Not weeding.
Not harvesting. Not scanning
for aphids. Just standing there
a few moments, hands hanging
empty at my sides. It lasts only
a minute or two before I return
to work with a clarity, an attunement,
that felt impossible before.
I want to plant an inner garden.
One I visit without a step.
One that asks nothing of me
except that I find myself there.
Placing Attention
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inside, outside, paradox, waking up on September 23, 2025| 2 Comments »
Today it was so clear.
It’s not all about the wounds
but the waking.
I took my broken heart outside
into the autumn air,
inhaled the scent of dying grass
and dying leaves and felt so alive
as the wind ravaged my untied hair.
Outside, I closed my eyes and went in.
In my ears, the roar of galvanized leaves.
On my face, unclouded sun.
And inside, such unnameable vastness
even now I stutter in wonder.
Sitting with My Husband at the Wedding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged marriage, tear, time, wedding on September 22, 2025| 6 Comments »
Watching the bride
and her father walk
the long distance
from the house
to the benches
in the grass,
I don’t even try
to hide my tears,
fat and warm,
my whole being aware
of how big it is
to give one’s life
to another,
and with her
every step,
my own
wedding comes
closer until
it is me
in a white dress
on the arm
of my father,
my husband
the man at the end
of the aisle,
my own lips
speaking till death
do us part,
my eyes glittering,
spilling, wet—
how sweet now
when the man
on my left
offers me his tissue
and somehow
with his kindness
and a wrinkled hand,
I touch those tears
thirty years ago.
At Last
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, good enough, what is here on September 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
after years of bowing
at the altar of not-good-enough,
I turn toward the rest
of the world and fall in love
with what is here
Writing into the Pain of the World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged thoughtshop on September 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »
September 24, 2025 6-7 mountain time
zoom, recorded
sliding scale
How do we live fully in the face of catastrophe? Last night I read this quote from Puerto Rican poet Aurora Levins Morales, and I thought, THAT. That is what I am hoping to do with this program: “The world is in great danger from runaway greed. The only thing that can stop it is large numbers of people becoming able to imagine and then create something better. … Because once we truly imagine it, the pull to create it becomes irresistible.”
Let’s imagine together. In this hour-long webinar-style program, I will share poems that help keep our eyes and hearts open to it all, poems that help us turn toward the horror and find a way forward. I will then offer invitations for you to do your own writing later–if you wish. Or just come to listen to brave, heart-opening poems. 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 I read, plus the writing invitations. For more info and to register, visit here.
What No One Else Can See
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, love, mother, string on September 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Every day I fasten
my heart to yours.
with invisible strings,
strings so light
you might almost forget
they are there
until you start falling
from any edge
like disappointment,
like betrayal, like
forgetting you belong.
The strings don’t
keep you from falling—
that’s just not
how it works.
Nor could I ever
control you with them
like some well-
intentioned puppeteer.
But feel that tug?
It’s my heart
reminding yours
we’re connected.
And remember those
simple phones we made
with string and two cups?
When you need me,
make of your heart
a cup. I will do the same.
I may not catch
all the words,
but I’ll feel them
with you, wherever
you are, I’ll
feel them.
Why Tenderness? Cinepoem from Risking Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged astronomy, cinepoem, neutron star, Risking Love, tenderness on September 18, 2025| 2 Comments »
You never know what someone else is going through.
Please—share this video. With a friend. With your family. With a colleague.
RISKING LOVE audio by Steve Law. Video by Holiday Mathis. Poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. To purchase RISKING LOVE, visit here.
Spotify: here Deezer: here Pandora: here Apple Music: here YouTube Music: here
To see all the videos on the album visit here.
“Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking” is the fifteenth and final 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.
Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking
On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including the insects. Times three.
Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.
There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, from All the Honey (Samara Press, 2023)
One Permanence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haikuling, integration, love, stain on September 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »
they’ve become us now,
integral as bone, as skin
these stains of love
We could say it took me my whole life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growing, growth, heart, particulars, unlearning, vastness on September 16, 2025| 4 Comments »
to grow a heart from lake water and an old
junk yard, from an empty classroom
and cheap novels bought at the second
hand store, two-liter bottles of diet coke
and a dusty dead-end road. There was more,
of course. An old plaid couch with a squeaky spring.
The spiraling cord of an old telephone. A rusty pan
with cornbread made with Mavis’s fresh eggs.
The breathing weight of my newborn girl.
What hasn’t gone into the growing of this heart?
An old red truck. The pinnately compound leaves
of Jacob’s Ladder. But it is the unpetaling
that astonishes now, how all the stories
of my becoming—all the particulars
that seemed so essential—begin to drop
No, not drop, exactly. It’s just that I nourish
these stories less as I turn my attention
toward the vastness from which all arose—
and in this turning, discover how the more
the heart is undone, the more
the heart can grow.
Four Upcoming Online Poetry Programs
Posted in Uncategorized on September 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Writing into the Pain of the World
September 24, 2025 6-7 mountain time
zoom, recorded
sliding scale
When the whole world seems to be in upheaval, why on earth would we write poems? In this hour-long webinar-style program, Rosemerry will share poems that help keep our eyes and hearts open to it all, poems that help us turn toward the horror and find a way forward. 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. For more info and to register, visit here.
*
Writing into the Paradox of Holding and Letting Go
October 16-17
zoom, $175, no recording
Please join us for a one-and-a-half-day poetry retreat as we explore through reflection and writing what life is asking of us during these times—holding on, letting go—while turning to the natural world as our inspiration and guide. We will nurture a trustworthy space to invite in an exploration of our relationship with this paradox. What happens when we deeply draw our attention to our surroundings, listen to our bodies and hearts, and look to nature as our teacher? How does it shift things for us? Through the Courage & Renewal approach and poetry writing and exploration, this offering invites you to connect with yourself and others—to slow down, reflect and notice, while experiencing poetry through the gateways of listening, creative writing, imagination, and shared exploration. With the discoveries we make, we can then appreciate—and capture in writing—the way in which we might be able to hold on and let go, all at once.
Writing into the Paradox of Holding On and Letting Go will be grounded in the Courage & Renewal® approach which you can learn more about in Parker J. Palmer’s book, A Hidden Wholeness. All are welcome.
For more information and to register, visit here.
Risk and Play: Flirting with the Unknown
October 23
5-7 p.m. mountain time
hosted by Kripalu
Zoom, recorded
$29
As part of Kripalu’s Fourth Annual Fall Writing Program, Rosemerry joins other esteemed writers Julia Cameron, Asif Ullah, Eric Maisel, and many more. The overall theme: Imagine New Worlds: Hope, Transformation and Exploration. Rosemerry’s class is Risk and Play: Flirting with the Unknown: Let curiosity and uncertainty drive your writing into fresh, resonant new regions. We’ll read poems that make us laugh, shake our heads, open our hearts and show up, and then in that vein, we’ll write. Play is a secret weapon for meeting failure, vulnerability, uncertainty, and humility. REGISTER HERE
*
Grace in Transition: Poetry as a bridge between the everyday & the sacred
Thursdays, October 30-Nov. 13
noon-2 p.m. mountain time
hosted by The Sanctuary in Ireland
Zoom, recorded
€75 (around $87)
Reading and writing poems can be a transformative art that helps us weave together the gritty particulars of our daily lives and the ethereal truths we glimpse in our spiritual practices. But it’s not the poems themselves that create the connective tissue, it’s the process of cultivating curiosity and opening to reflection. In this process-forward three-week playshop, we’ll practice self-compassion, wonder, and embodied attentiveness as we read, write and converse about poems. For more information or to register visit here.
If you appreciate receiving these free daily poems, please consider offering support through Buy Me a Coffee, venmo (rosemerry-trommer) or zelle (rosemerryt@gmail.com)
The Holding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, heart, holding, pain, pond on September 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The way the shore holds the pond,
that is how I want to hold
the pain in my heart, honoring
how vital it is. How it is home
to things with hard shells and sharp
claws and also to beings with gossamer
wings. To drain it would be to lose
my aliveness. To become barren,
cracked, dry. I can’t say I love
the spider-like skaters that streak
across the top, nor the thick gray muck
that lines the bottom. But I love
the green rushes that rim the edges,
the red-stemmed willows, the wild
iris. It is no easy thing to hold pain,
but I look how vibrant the pond shore is.
This alive is how I want to live.
Getting In the Car to Drive to Cortez
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, Colorado, drive, meeting the world, paradox on September 14, 2025| 4 Comments »
I bring with me the face of the mother I saw on the news,
the one whose shoulders shuddered as a friend
led her from the scene. I bring the ugliness
of the words I read on Facebook, black letters
on a red screen preaching rage and retaliation.
I bring the hollow cheeked boy wearing blue
greasy clothes and the smudged white body bag,
and together we drive through the canyon
where the river is swollen from last night’s rain
and the tops of cottonwoods are just beginning
to turn golden. We don’t say anything as we rise
into the valley to see mountain peaks sleeved in white.
A small bear stands on the side of the road
on his back legs, dragging acorns into his mouth
with both upper paws. A slate blue cloud
smudges the distant sky and every branch, every
rock, every bumper, every porch sparkles
in morning sun. How do we metabolize it all?
Oh body, great receptor, portal for wonder and pain.
Who am I when I step out of the car? Changed.