Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Six Weeks After I Break My Foot

May 24, 2025 by Rosemerry

 
It still hurts. Not like it did at first,
of course. But still. One slight change
in angle can cause a sharp zing
that brings me to stillness.
Perhaps this is the day when
I don’t resent the pain.
Perhaps this is the day
I embrace how pain belongs
to this life as much as joy,
I imagine pain is like the strict
third-grade teacher I didn’t  
love at the time, but years later,
I thank for holding a line.
If there is a way to appreciate struggle
in this very moment and not wait
for the future when I see the struggle
has been good for me, well, I don’t
yet understand it. But I do know
that stillness has never come so easily
to me as it does today when, again,
I feel the ache and discover just how
lovely it is to sit here, to not move an inch,
to watch the green swallows as they fly.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

Beauty Lesson

May 22, 2025 by Rosemerry


 
It used to embarrass me when my mother
would wear her bright palazzo pants printed
with enormous yellow and purple flowers,
red petals, blue petals—I mean every
single possible color of petal. And she
loved them. Flounced in them. Flowed
in them. Strutted and glided and felt
beautiful in them. I wanted to hide.
Now, when mom sends me pictures
of her dressed in bold patterns and sharp colors,
I delight in her delight. How strange
it would be for mom to slink
around in solid black and gray like me.
Laughable, even. My mother is audacious
in her taste. Now when I say, You look great, Mom,
I mean, You are a garden in full bloom.
I mean, You are exotic bird. A wild
kaleidoscope. I mean, I am still learning
how our differences are gifts. I mean,
Mom, you are beautiful.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments »

Right Now, Mid-Story

May 22, 2025 by Rosemerry


 
 
I am placing a bookmark on this page
in which my daughter and I drive
highways and turnpikes and green
curving backroads, singing
our way past tree farms and smoke
stacks, past sheep and cornfields,
grand estates and collapsed barn roofs,
this page on which, in every moment,
we are driving right up to the blank
edge where the story is still seeking
its setting and the narrator is still
seeking her voice and the page is
still seeking the fingers that will turn
it and those fingers are still so soft
as, with total trust, they hold my hand.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

Last Days

May 20, 2025 by Rosemerry




In the end, my father couldn’t
raise his arm to feed himself.
Couldn’t sit. Could barely open
his eyes. But damn, could he love.
He could still curl his thick
fingers around my hand.
Could still say my name.
And though I had never known
a moment when I was not sure
this man loved me, in those last days
I knew it more. Somehow, barely
able to speak, he drenched me
in his devotion. In those last days,
all was reduced to love. Or was it
all was expanded to love? Either
way. Somehow I hadn’t known
how love can take over a body.
A life. The purity of it. The gift.

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

One Affirmation

May 19, 2025 by Rosemerry


 
cupping the truth in my hands
until my own palms
glow

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 8 Comments »

Most moments

May 18, 2025 by Rosemerry


 
 
it feels as if I’m leaning forward
in my chair on the off chance
I might soon get to leap to my feet
in standing ovation. As if I expect
life to be wonderful. And so often
it is. Like today when my girl and I
made up new slang for friendship,
or when the rain let up and
the highway was once again dry.
Now that I write it, some cynical
sliver of myself chimes in,  
Really, Rosemerry? You’re always
at the edge of cheering
for life? And I turn to that
cynical sliver and leap up and cheer
at the realization that at last
I don’t mind the inner trash talk.
In fact, I love this smirking,
sarcastic vein of myself, and I nod
at her with all my over-the-top earnestness
and clap as she doubts me, I
clap and I clap and I clap.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 13 Comments »

One Unframeable

May 17, 2025 by Rosemerry


 
in a room of priceless art
I keep turning toward
my daughter’s smile

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

Shining

May 16, 2025 by Rosemerry


 
 
Have you seen the way the sun
spills only the teensiest fraction
of its light into the crabapple tree
and yet that is enough to transform
the petals from plain flat white
into radiant luminosity? Sometimes
love does this, too—I am thinking
of the way a woman can wake up
beside another human for thirty-some years,
perhaps she thinks she knows that person,
perhaps she really does, and then,
one morning, she sees them anew,
shining, gleaming even—not
just some trick of the light but
some magic love offers us,
the chance to witness how our
partner is changing, to marvel
at their ongoing becoming, to know
afresh just how lucky we are.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments »

One Role Model

May 15, 2025 by Rosemerry

leaf sinks to the bottom—
even the river too tired
to hold up everything

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 4 Comments »

One Missed Opportunity

May 13, 2025 by Rosemerry

that would have been a great time
for me to tell you I love you,
that time when I jabbered on
about the shapes of glasses,
about the weather, the color of the tile

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »