As if the whole world depended on it
I nestled deeper into your warmth,
made myself soft as morning light,
soft as a lullaby, softer than that,
as if wars could be stopped and
peace achieved if only I could
make of my flesh a place so safe
you could sleep.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
After the Nightmare
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, love, nightmare, sleep, softness, tenderness on March 10, 2024| 2 Comments »
After I Told Them About Our Two Daughters, They Asked If We Had More Children
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, difficult conversation, loss, what is unsaid on March 10, 2024| 13 Comments »
today’s poem mentions suicide–I mention this so you can choose if you wish to read it
There’s no easy way to say it.
I told them. Our son died.
They were sitting across
from us, our new neighbors,
afternoon sun streaming
into the room with low spring gold.
Their grandson sat on our floor,
a teaspoon the only toy I had for him.
He mouthed it with quiet joy.
Was it an accident? she asked.
He chose to take his own life, I said.
The words hung in the air
like dust that sparkles
then seems to disappear.
What I did not say:
Once we sat on this couch
and read books, watched Peter Pan,
built pirate forts with pillows, searched
for Waldo and snuggled when it rained.
Once he, too, chewed on my teaspoons,
before he built computers and
took AP Statistics and helped me buy a Ford.
They murmured, I’m sorry,
because that’s what people say
when there is nothing else to say.
I realized I needed nothing more.
When the talk soon turned
to bonfires and building permits,
I did not mind. It was enough
to have acknowledged he was here.
What I did not say, but somehow said:
Just because he’s dead
doesn’t mean he’s gone.
We have three children—
two daughters and a son.
The Day You Took My Picture Was the Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being with, happiness, pond, stillness on March 9, 2024| 7 Comments »
I sat by the pond and watched
the blue dragonflies land
on slender green reeds.
And the sun was warm and
the air was still as I was still,
which is to say the air pulsed
with aliveness and so did I.
If someone could see the picture
from that day, they might think
I was sad. No slip of a smile
touches my lips. My glance
is far off, unfocused.
But I was in a place beyond
happiness, a place of being with,
a place that asks nothing of me
except that I forget everything
but sitting beside the pond
and marveling at blue dragonflies
as they weave and land,
the reeds so slender, so green.
A Little Self-Talk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ants, humility, pride, sins on March 7, 2024| 10 Comments »
Pride crawls beneath the heart’s door
like an ant. You thought, perhaps,
you’d shut it out. Thought you could live
in a small hut called humility.
But pride is a master at entering
when something sweet is at stake.
Look. There it is in your honey.
Did you think you did such a good job
sweeping pride out? Oh, you did.
Thought you could be good at being humble.
Better at it than most.
Oh sweetheart, it’s not a matter
of shutting pride out. It will always come back.
It’s what you do next that matters.
In Less Than Fifteen Minutes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged becoming, joy, nature, outside on March 6, 2024| 5 Comments »
As easy as stepping out the door,
this chance to drop the self who does,
the self who walls and calendars and phones,
the self who dishes and bills and desks
and become the self that becomes—
become whispering field and bright
squawking jay and full silence rising
mid squawks. Become sun-puddled,
sky-muddled, breeze-ruffled
heartbeat, spruce-reaching,
blue-winging, leaf-whirling heartbeat,
snow-melting, cliff-lifting,
grass greening heartbeat, become
heart warmth beat heart breath beat
heart sun beat heart cloud beat
heart heart heart heart
as if this time I’ll never forget.
Talking with Andrea
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, friendship, grace, language, praise on March 5, 2024| 12 Comments »
I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.
—Anne Lamott
With every cell, I listened
to her familiar voice,
her thoughtful silences,
her precision with verbs,
and though we spoke
of showerheads and
grocery shopping,
elections, underbellies and
standing beneath the moon,
we spoke only of grace, every
sentence somehow stitched
with the most stripped-down
kind of praise, the kind
that doesn’t sparkle,
doesn’t sing, doesn’t
shimmy, doesn’t offer
sweet perfume, the kind
of praise that is so naked,
so plain, so bare
there is nothing at all
between us and the
sheer magnificent truth
that we are here.
I long to name such aliveness,
at once composed
and uncontainable,
but it slips my attempts—
it’s like trying to fit a dress
on a sunbeam.
But I felt it, how
as we spoke I went
from being stone
to being sky. Oh glory,
with my everything,
I felt it.
Writing Our Way Through Dante’s Divine Comedy
Posted in Uncategorized on March 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »
A three-part workshop with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
& Kayleen Asbo
First Thursdays for Three Months
March 7: Finding Our Way Out of Hell
April 4: Climbing the Mountain of Hope
May 2: Coming Home to Ourselves in Paradise
Each month on the first Thursday of the month, join Rosemery and Kayleen online as we gather for four and a half hours from 10 am – 2:30 pm (MOUNTAIN TIME) to dive more deeply into Dante and also discover the wisdom that can emerge from our own hearts through creative writing practices fueled by the story, art and music all connected to the Divine Comedy.
Can’t make it live? No worries. We record every session so you can explore at your own pace. We offer this three-part series on a sliding scale ($110-$330). If you are in greater need because it is really a “dark wood” time, just drop us a line at mythicafoundation@gmail.com and tell us about yourself.
If you weren’t able to join us last week for our free 60-minute teaser class, click here to get a taste of the class and how it is Dante found himself writing The Divine Comedy in the first place.
Thanks to the generosity of donors, we have scholarships for those in need.
9 am-1:30 pm PST/10-2:30 MST/11 am -3:30 CST/12-4:30 pm EST
REGISTER HERE
The Mystery of Grief: Writing Into Loss
Posted in Uncategorized on March 5, 2024| 2 Comments »
The Mystery of Grief: Writing into the Loss
Wednesday, March 6
7-9pm ET, 6-8pm CT, 5-7pm MT and 4-6pm PT
Zoom, $15
Hosted by Evermore: America’s voice in advancing social change for all bereaved people
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. Recording will be sent to everyone who registers.
REGISTER HERE
If you need an angel ticket or have any questions, please contact jena@evermore.org
Other versions of this workshop will be held on the first Wednesday of the month on June 5, September 4, and December 4.
The Unbroken
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broken, spirit, unbroken on March 5, 2024| 4 Comments »
The walls I thought
would shelter me?
Blown down
by merciless wind.
And I’m too spent
to erect them again.
I can’t stand it, I shout,
my voice nothing
in the gusts.
I can’t stand it,
I whimper.
Yet I am still here.
What is it
that keeps us alive?
Whatever it is,
it’s harder now
to see myself
as separate from it.
When I am broken,
it is what is not broken.
When I cannot stand,
it takes on my shape
and carries me.
Blustery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, friendship, laughter, skiing, wind on March 3, 2024| 4 Comments »
for Corinne
Into the wind, the whipping
wind, the fierce, tempestuous,
mighty wind, we skied
as it pushed us and
bent us and slapped us
in a language made wholly
of howl—how alive we were,
laughing into the gale,
taking the storm into our lungs,
as if our breath could learn
its syntax, translate
its tongues of gust and squall
into wild, untamable mirth.
This is how we carried the storm
home in our bloodstream.
This is how, even now,
I feel it in my lips,
an uncontrollable, reckless smile.