I don’t know why sometimes
the same story can feel like ash
in the mouth and another time
like flame. Each time the story
is the same, but sometimes,
it scorches to share it.
I am thinking of today, how I read
a poem about your death
as if there were no more fuel to burn,
reciting a fact, as if saying,
There is no snow in the yard.
Five minutes later, I read the same
poem and had to restart four times
just to get past the first two lines.
I prefer the flame. Prefer to be moved
by how much you’ve changed me.
Not to dwell in the loss, but not
to shy from being torched by love.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged feeling, flame, friendship, grief, love, sorrow | 10 Comments »
In the dark house
we watch the moon
rise through the window,
watch as its fullness
climbs into the sky.
For everything we see,
so much we miss.
But in this moment,
your hand in mine,
we give the moon
all our attention until
every part of us,
even our wounds, are
shining.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged attention, becoming, connection, moon | 2 Comments »
A humble contentment.
Because blue green spruce
by the creek bed.
Because ancient red
of sandstone cliffs.
This almost forgettable moment
not forgotten.
This small seeing.
This ease in being, unearned.
Because the tips of the spruce
are more silver, softer.
Because afternoon mist
somehow mingles it all.
Because sometimes when I try,
I cannot feel the connection.
This moment when trust is.
This sinking of my foot
into slick, wet earth.
This small thing.
This everything.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged connection, contentment, grace, nature, peacefulness, seeing, tree, walking | 4 Comments »
Just after midnight
we stand beside the stove
holding each other,
your thumb slowly relearning
the portal of my spine.
Satie’s first Gymopédie
slips stepwise through the room,
the tune like starlight emerging
after a storm blew down all the trees.
We are almost, but not quite, still.
How little movement it takes,
plus an opening in the mind,
to know the body as dancing.
How little beauty it takes
to know a sad moment
as a moment both sad and beautiful.
And what of a year? What of a life?
How much beauty can we bring
with the days we are given?
How would the years change
if we believed we were not
just moving through them,
but dancing?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beauty, dancing, erik satie, new year, paradox | 10 Comments »
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | 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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
mama and I drive through
a desert of memories,
sometimes these old arroyos still flood
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged driving, memories | 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.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 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/
Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments »