Wednesday, January 7, 5-7 p.m. M.T.
On Zoom, recorded
hosted by Evermore
$15
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.
Archive for December, 2025
The Mystery of Grief: Writing into the Loss
Posted in Uncategorized on December 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Dressing Up as Flora
Posted in Uncategorized on December 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »
for Lisa
Especially in dark days,
I need these rooms of play
like tonight when with glue guns
and fake leaves we turn ourselves
into wandering vines and remember
our own inner wildness, the untamable
energy that pulses and hums us.
Draw leaves on my cheeks
and twist leaves round my wrists.
Weave leaves in my hair until, covered
in vines, I can no longer forget
how easily joy roots and rises inside us,
twining and tangling with the joy of others.
It is alive in us, green and vigorous.
Especially in these dark days, I feel it,
how joy grows us toward the light.
One on the Way to the Airport
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, memories on December 29, 2025| 2 Comments »
mama and I drive through
a desert of memories,
sometimes these old arroyos still flood
Writing to Meet Grief
Posted in Uncategorized on December 29, 2025| 2 Comments »
January 7, 2026
7-9pm ET, 6-8pm CT, 5-7pm MT and 4-6pm PT
Zoom, recorded, $15
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. To register, visit HERE.
In Honor of Kyra Kopestonsky
Posted in Uncategorized on December 28, 2025| 16 Comments »
Baking Cake on Dec. 27
Dear Kyra,
Here you are in the scent of chocolate beet cake
that lingers in the kitchen hours after the cake is done—
as if the world conspires to prove how something
we can’t see or touch can still be so present.
I remember the first time you made the recipe for us—
how outrageous it seemed to add roasted beets to a cake.
Now it’s our favorite, dark and rich with deep pink frosting.
Every time we make it, we think of you. Like tonight.
As Vivian and I bake a birthday cake for Timothée Chalamet,
we celebrate his life even as we mourn your death.
Isn’t it always all of it all at once? For days,
I’ve been lighting candles for you in the windows,
letting time blow them out. Tonight, I trace
your handwritten notes on the recipe with my fingertips—
like using less sugar and subbing coconut oil for butter,
plus suggestions for how to make the frosting more fancy.
I feel as if you’ve left handwritten notes in my heart—
like bake more cakes, substitute kindness for annoyance,
plus suggestions for how to make music in the hardest times.
I don’t know how it works, but if you can make a wish,
these candles are for you. I will keep lighting them.
It’s dark, my dear, and your life is still so bright.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Dear friends,
My beloved friend Kyra Kopestonsky died on Dec. 23, 2025, at 5:25 p.m. of complications due to breast cancer. She was one of the most kind, generous, loving, peaceful, humble, creative humans I know. In dozens of my books, she’s left me little love notes over the years. She would make our family certificates for sweet and silly things, and we have them hanging on the wall. She made us strange and lovely new foods–like chocolate beet cake–and would leave them labeled in our fridge. She was a talented musician who used to play piano for a living, then left that work to be more of a vagabond, traveling with her cello and playing roadside and on mountainsides. She accompanied me on so many trips to play cello with me as I performed poetry, and for many years she was the host of the “Poetry Drop Box” beside the highway–a way for people to exchange poems. She would play cello on top of people as a way to heal them, and for my birthday, she would always play me a Russian death song–haunting and minor and slow. Being Kyra’s friend is one of the greatest gifts of my life. May we all carry a bit of Kyra’s love light and shine it forward into the world.
Below are links to other poems about her–and here is a link to her official obituary.
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2020/02/26/olfactory/
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2020/01/18/how-to-slice-open-an-avocado/
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2017/11/03/on-my-birthday-a-death-song/
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2025/01/29/stage-4/
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2024/09/14/before-turning-toward-light-again/
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2019/02/05/one-friendship/
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2025/12/24/lit/
The Dream Rink
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inclusion, KC Trommer, party, roller skating on December 27, 2025| 4 Comments »
I didn’t know how much I needed
KC to invite me to her roller skating party
at Roll On America until today, when
she told me she wanted me to come.
The party was over four decades ago.
I didn’t know her then, and the rink
has long since been demolished,
but somehow my inner twelve year old
got the invite and jumped up and down
and ran circles around my inner rooms
pumping her arms in the air, shouting,
Yesssssss! All afternoon I felt her
bobbling on her faux suede tan roller skates,
chasing after KC who can tuck and skate
right between other people’s moving legs.
The Steve Miller Band has been singing
nonstop in my head about heating up and going
round and round, and I want to send invites
to every single kid who has ever felt excluded—
those kids still hurting somewhere inside
so many of us. There’s room for us all
at the dream rink. What a party we’re going to have.
Noel, Noel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, family, harmony, singing on December 26, 2025| 8 Comments »
for Diane
Though my fingers fumble through
the joyful and triumphant chords,
though the notes are too high
for me to sing without stridence,
and though Diane’s alto is no longer
steady as it was over twenty years
ago when we began this Christmas ritual,
still we snuggle side by side
on the black lacquer bench
and harmonize through the deep
and dreamless sleep and the child
who shivers in the cold, we sing
of hopes and fears of all the years
and though we are clumsy and stilting
and downright not good, we are singing
through the darkest part of the year,
through this tender time for us all.
The light of an ancient star shines inside us.
And as we stumble, we laugh and
sing that light back to the world.
Six Glimpses of Christmas Eve
Posted in Uncategorized on December 25, 2025| 4 Comments »
old wound—
I touch it
with new grace
*
crescent moon—
aligning my lips to its tip
to sip straight from the mystery
*
faint scent of pine—
memory of when we were
the whole forest
*
sitting together around the table—
almost weeping at the simple gift
of sitting together around the table
*
wrapping gifts at midnight
the darkness helps me
tie the last bow
*
I despise anchovies—
knowing you love them,
they are my favorite present
Lit
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kyra on December 24, 2025| 6 Comments »
for Kyra
Tonight when I light the candle
and say your name, I notice
how you have lit me—
with your words, your voice,
the way you clap your hands
at the smallest of joys.
Because you’ve given me
light you’ve gathered from
the darkest of places,
I will never be the same.
Again and again, you have lit me
as if my life is beeswax
and love is the wick and
your courageous life is flame.
In a Difficult Time, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brahms, concert, kindness, Kyra Kopestonksky, music on December 23, 2025| 6 Comments »
for Kyra
In a corrugated metal culvert, tall enough
to walk in, Kyra made us a nest of warm blankets.
We entered the steel tube from the same side
the flash floods enter each fall, and we curled
into the softness she’d prepared. Meanwhile,
she settled on a stool and began to bow her cello,
a Brahms lullaby meant to lull and soothe.
Above us, cars hummed along on the highway.
Beside us, daylight glowed from both round ends.
Inside me, what was broken was still so deeply broken,
but I felt, too, the gentling that arrives with surprise
beauty. There are times someone tends to our hearts
with such warmth, such goodness, our hearts
cannot help but bloom. Even when the heart soil is barren.
Even when there’s no chance for rain. Even in the midst
of breaking—there, just at the edge of perception—
the heart becomes a wildflower in spring. It is simple kindness
that grows us, the kind my friend brought with her everywhere.
Even now, I can see her swaying as she played,
her body a radiant pendulum draped in red velvet.
Even now, I hear the long, sonorous notes of her song.
Even now, I think of her smile, humble and shy, and
how that moment still reverberates—her cello, our sighs,
the laughter that somehow finds its way to our lips
in the saddest of times. Years later, her kindness still echoes.
Inner Mars
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desolation, love, mars, space on December 22, 2025| 2 Comments »
I want to travel the desolate lands of the heart,
enter red places where nothing else grows,
where there is nowhere for either of us to hide,
some vast, unmapped space where we cannot
know what we will do next. There are canyons there
forged by currents of tears so old we no longer
remember their source. We could walk
to the canyon’s edges, stand at the cliffs,
drop our names and stories into the abyss.
What would be left of us to watch the sun setting
beyond the horizon, the sky changing from red
to blue before the irregular moons begin to rise,
one quick and bright, the other ghostly and slow?
In the midst of such barrenness, would we finally
trust just how lush, how exotic, how feral and fecund
this chance we’ve been given to be alive, to love?
Standing in the Dark on Winter Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, everything, nothing, solstice, three-word lines on December 21, 2025| 2 Comments »
The dark rushes
into my lungs.
With each breath,
I imagine I
become more nothing.
The longer I’m
still, the more
I rhyme with
the vast dark
and know myself
as the mystery
that holds everything.
After Reaching for You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, memory, stillness on December 20, 2025| 6 Comments »
for Finn
There was a list. We were laughing.
This is all I remember as first light
enters the windows, slips
somehow through closed lids.
I keep my eyes closed in hopes
that if I am still enough I can grasp
an image tendril of the dream
and tug it closer.
For hours, it doesn’t work.
When I stop reaching, what is here
are real memories of you—your
head bent over the table doing math,
how jealous you were of your sister’s
snowman stuffy, the way your feet hung
over the end of almost every bed.
Is it true all I had to do was stop reaching
for the dream so that whole skeins
of memories could unravel and wrap
me in their long, faithful strands?
Is it true being still is now the best
way I can hold you? I am still.
Somehow in the softening, I don’t feel
your hand here in my open hand, but I do.
Writing Through Rupture: A Poetic Exploration of Meeting Our Brokenness
Posted in Uncategorized on December 18, 2025| 2 Comments »
January 6, 13, 20, 27 2026
One Spirit
Online, Recorded
$175/4 weeks
Every experience in life is worthy of our careful attention—even the most painful, broken times—and poetry provides a way to meet each experience with a willingness to witness the ever-unfolding story of our own lives and the story of our world. Though a poem can’t fix things, can’t heal us, can’t change the facts, reading and writing poems can change the way we meet the facts, and this can change everything. Together we’ll read poems, converse about them, use them as launching points for our own writing and talk about process. We’ll explore playing with metaphors and paradox, letting curiosity lead us past the edge of what we think we know into new possibilities for framing a moment. Wonder will be our guide. We’ll be less interested in writing something perfect and more interested in discovering our own stumbling blocks and epiphanies. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer helps weave a safe environment for exploring how to bring wonder and self-compassion into a creative practice. More a playshop than a workshop—more soulwork than craft, though we will talk about how craft can serve our creative process, too. All levels of poetry-writing experience welcome.
Attendees will have a chance to:
- Explore creative writing to express your inner experience.
- Play with metaphors to create new frames for seeing the world.
- Hold our stories more loosely, with less judgment, more curiosity.
- Use writing as a tool for meeting difficult feelings.
- Share your experience (if desired) in a supportive community.
For more info and to register, visit here. And feel free to use this Affiliate Discount Code: POETRY26, Discount Amount: $15 OFF
NOTE FROM ONE SPIRIT: There is a note on the registration page and under each ticket that says to only purchase one ticket, any ticket, for any day, for $175. Unfortunately our system is limited when it comes to multi week events. It does not allow for me to put all of the dates without having “tickets” available for all of the dates. If you purchase 1 ticket for any week, you get the rest of the weeks as well. All 4 weeks = $175. Only purchase 1 ticket. Not to worry!
But Not a Moment Sooner
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, laughter, self-acceptance on December 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
Eventually we learn to laugh when we drop
the glass and it shatters all over the floor,
finding laughter more fun than a shackle of curses.
We can wiggle our butt more when someone
says it looks big instead of trying to tuck it
tighter beneath our hips. Eventually we learn
there is no way to not be exactly ourselves.
What freedom then. We can listen to the sound
of our own voice without cringing. Can dance
in front of anyone. Can wake up grateful for our aging face
in the mirror. Can wear questions like exotic perfume
and see how they grow us. Eventually,
we can look at each other and say,
I’m so glad you are exactly who you are.
So Soon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christmas tree, kindness, light on December 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
An hour after we light the tree,
it’s hard to remember
how the room used to be—
so soon we relax into radiance.
It makes me want to whisper
luminous words, string kindnesses
together like twinkling garland,
hang them wherever it’s dim.
If we all spoke in light,
imagine that glow—how
quickly even the darkest spaces
inside and between us
could become welcoming,
warm, even, imagine, incandescent.
Remembering Rose
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, dancing, grandmother, music on December 17, 2025| 8 Comments »
I remember her waltzing across the living room
singing, Somewhere my love, dah dah dah, dah,
dah dah. She was dancing alone, as she often did,
but oh, could she waltz, small feet like wings, her thin
body gliding past tables and chairs, weaving, spinning,
her arms lifted up in the air around a loving partner
who had never been there. I don’t think
she knew the rest of the words, or at least
she didn’t sing them. Always Somewhere
my love, again and again, like a promise
she wanted to believe in. She danced
like that through my childhood. Perhaps
dancing itself was her love. I can see her now
box stepping, one, two, three, one two three,
each step a step closer to all she did not have.
When René Makes Peruvian Noodles and Huancaína
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, peru, travel on December 16, 2025| 6 Comments »
I ladle on extra sauce.
Roasted peanuts. Onion. Mint?
Fruity heat of yellow pepper.
It’s creamy, spicy, decadent.
I think how far Renee has traveled.
A wide river hides in his smile.
A great cat prowls through his name.
There are mountains in his eyes.
When Renee makes Huancaína,
I taste somewhere I’ve never been.
A sacred valley with ancient paths.
Misty skies and terraced lands.
His gift to us: within moments of tasting,
we travel flavors centuries in the making.
December 14
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, nakedness, sun, survival, warmth, winter solstice on December 15, 2025| 11 Comments »
A week before winter solstice,
we explore in our room a spilling
of low-angled sun, a deep pool
of light the darkness has not
yet devoured. Our bodies,
pale pilgrims traversing the night,
wade in, then dive, surprised
by this warm, naked hour.
Our hearts have been wrecked,
but we yet survive, washed up
like flotsam on this radiant
shore, this place we’ve known
thousands of days before.
But somehow, today,
this bright measure of sun
helps us more truly arrive—
sometimes it’s the unremarkable
gifts that keep us alive.