Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Offering Gentleness

September 7, 2022 by Rosemerry

Gentle is time to be gentle.
            —Ole Dalby, private correspondence


Gentle is time to be gentle,
   he writes, and I let myself
     fall into the cadence of his words

the way as a girl I once dreamt
   I could fall into a cloud—
     something soft beyond soft,

something infinitely calm.
   Gentle is time to be gentle,
     he writes, and though

my mind struggles to decipher it,
   my body instantly nestles
     into the tenderness of it,

as if he has wrapped each word
   in cumulonimbus, as if gentleness
     is the only obvious path, as if I, too,

might offer such gentleness
   to someone else with words
     spun of nimbostratus, with syllables

of cirrus, with thoughts as cushiony
   as the clouds we once drew as kids,
     those clouds we once lived in

before we were told we could not.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 6 Comments »

In the Garden, Again

September 6, 2022 by Rosemerry




After breaking, after kneeling,
after raising my ripe fist, after
opening my palm, after
clenching it again, after running,
after hiding, after taking off
my masks, after stilling,
after shouting, after bargaining
with God, after crumpling
and cursing, after losing,
after song, after seeking,
after breath, after breath,
after breath,
I stand in the sunflowers
of early September
and watch as the bees weave
from one giant bloom to another,
and I, too, am sunflower,
tall-stemmed and face lifted,
shaped by the love of light
and the need for rain.
I stand here until some part of me
is again more woman than sunflower,
and she notices how,
for a few moments,
it was enough just to be alive.
Just to be alive, it was enough.

*

This poem was published in ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry on 9/11/22

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 7 Comments »

September Night

September 5, 2022 by Rosemerry




The mountain air forgets to be cold,
and my daughter and I walk in the dark
beside the river. I almost can’t see,
yet thanks to starlight,
we step over roots, over rocks.
There are moments,
even whole chapters of our lives,
when we understand how the smallest
bit of light makes a difference.  
Tonight, we are laughing,
singing as we go.
Trust, too, is a kind of light.
In this dark moment, it is all I see.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments »

One at the Film Festival

September 5, 2022 by Rosemerry



 
 
a happy ending, nice,
but what the heart most longs for—
the hairshirt of truth

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 7 Comments »

Essential

September 4, 2022 by Rosemerry

By now, of course,
I know things change—
the leaves of love,
the nest of grief,
the map of yes,
the certainty
of together.
But to know love,
to know yes
for even a moment
is to know it forever.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments »

One Unusual Delivery Service

September 3, 2022 by Rosemerry

tying my prayer
to a passing cloud—
come wind

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 6 Comments »

Here to Be Swallowed Up

September 2, 2022 by Rosemerry




Part of me thrills to walk in the woods
and find dozens of old king boletes,
their cinnamon caps stretched and blotched,
the yellow sponge of their underbellies
bloated with rain and dappled with dross,
their stems turned to lace by maggots.
There was a time I felt responsible
for gathering them all to eat them, to dry them,
to share them, lest they go to waste.
As if I could ever gather them all.
As if to bloom and thrive
and return to the earth is a waste.
The mushrooms teach me something
of what it is to show up, to give it all
for the sake of giving it all.
I feel so lucky now to find their dark puddles
as they deliquesce.
Soon, there will be no evidence
they were here at all. I leave the woods
no less broken, more whole.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

One Willingness

August 31, 2022 by Rosemerry

like a dandelion seed
in the land of wind,
this heart longing to serve

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

After a Year of Grieving

August 30, 2022 by Rosemerry




Not that the sorrow became smaller.
Not that I stashed it away.
Not that I moved through it.
More as if a spaciousness grew,
as if the lens of life had been zoomed in tight
and slowly, slowly it widened.
Or as if I’d been cupping my hands
around something precious
and finally I trusted I could open my hands
and that precious thing would not fly away—
or perhaps it would, and I would still be fine.
All I know is today, I feel it,
not only the sorrow, but also
an inner vastness, a capaciousness,
an ability to breathe, to be opened,
as if my own back has turned
into a window. As if my heart
has become clear sky.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 14 Comments »

When Feeling Stuck

August 29, 2022 by Rosemerry




Sometimes I forget I’m surrounded
   by whirl, forget the earth’s turning,
     forget our galaxy’s spiraling nature.
   But it helps me today to remember myself
as swirl, from the whorl in my fingerprints
   to the curl in my hair to the twirl in my step
     as I move through the rooms of a house
       that somehow feels solid and stable. It helps
     to think of the day as a twist,
   an infinite trip on a mobius strip,
and suddenly stuck isn’t quite so stuck,
   and whatever in me is wedged
     isn’t quite so wedged, and I become more
       like a starry night, ethereal, dreamlike,
     as I start to recall the joy in the spinning,
   the freedom in the churning,
and I open again to a magic that invites me to play
   far beyond the frame.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 8 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »