It is kindness that moves her hand
to flip the switch on the hot pot,
and somehow a movement
that’s merely a flick is transformed
into an act of great love. It is kindness
that helps her choose the mug
she thinks I’d like the most—
not too small, not too big,
not too clunky. Perhaps the one
with pansies. Perhaps the one
that was dad’s. There is kindness
in the way she unwraps the tea bag,
my favorite earl gray, the bergamot
floral and strong. Kindness in the way
she pours in the soy milk,
the kind I like best, organic,
unsweetened, something she would
never drink herself but will always
have on hand for me. And so when
I wake in her bed and she tells me,
I’ve made you a cup of tea,
I know she is also saying
you are so precious to me.
I taste it in every sip, how warm it is,
how generous, the black tea so bright,
the milk so creamy, so smooth.
even with no sugar, so sweet.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daughter, intention, kindness, love, mother, tea | 3 Comments »
Join me live in Denver! May 5!
- 4-hour workshop starting at 1:30
- poetry and guitar concert at 7:30 with guitarist Steve Law
Risking Love: Writing Poems that Help Us Fall in Love with the World as It Is
1:30-5:30 p.m.
workshop: $125
“The more stuff you love, the happier you will be.”
—Ross Gay, The Book of Delights
When bad news charges the air, it is more important than ever to both acknowledge what is difficult and explore the necessity of joy, the need for love. This paradox is the cornerstone of Rosemerry’s daily writing practice and at the heart of what she’ll share in her performance at the Paradise that night—an ecstatic show of music and poetic medicine with her guitarist Steve Law. Take a peek behind the creative curtain—how the honey gets spun. In this four-hour playshop, we’ll read and write poems that help us see, honor and celebrate all the beauty still vital and present. We’ll practice perspective—a poetic superpower—and explore how this skill helps us meet a blank page (and the world) with wonder. Process intensive. Sharing optional. As Rilke writes, “We transform the world from within our hearts.” Let’s practice. Together. All levels of participants welcome—from never ever wrote a poem before to Pulitzer Prize winners.
Space is limited so secure your ticket today! Register here
Risking Love: A Wild & Tender Night of Poetry & Guitar with Steve Law
7:30-9 p.m.
concert: $20
Flirty. Smart. Electric. Raw. Join Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and guitarist Steve Law for an intimate evening of poetry performance that explores how we might fall more deeply in love with the world as it is. At a time when bad news seems to charge the air, falling in love has never been more important—with the earth, with each other, with ourselves, with the divine. Playful and provocative, it’s a strong dose of soul medicine—like whiskey, like honey, like straight-up joy.
For more information and to register, visit here.
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Because it hurts to think about
the lost look in the boy’s eyes
as he holds out a thin silver pot for food,
because I ache when I think about the rubble
made of kitchen tables and bicycles,
hospitals, homes, high schools, hope,
because it is so painful to not know how
to help hundreds of thousands
of mothers and uncles and brothers
and daughters, I think about trees.
I think about how they grow.
How they need wind and the stress
of the world to build reaction wood
that helps them to lengthen
and strengthen into the bend.
Without such wood, the tree would break,
would fall. Oh self who would try to lock out the news,
oh self who feels the great weight of other’s pain,
of course you would want to look instead
for only what is beautiful, what is kind.
But let it all in. The fear. The worry. The anger.
The wishing. The compassion.
The longing to help. Of course
the big problems make you feel small.
But unless you can stand
in the place of yes to the world,
you can’t really stand at all.
The hunters in Eurasia would harvest
the compression wood created by stress
to make their bow staves—
that wood was stronger, more dense.
Oh self, you too need the right tools
to do the heart work you long to do.
What are you made of?
How strong are your roots?
Who will you be if you do not let it all in?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged letting it all in, news, note to self, pain, trees, war | 14 Comments »
my chest filled with anxiety,
as if burrs grew in my bloodstream,
sharp barbs catching on my skin from inside.
I wanted the feeling to go away.
Wanted to know I could make everything okay.
And the burdock dug deeper in,
clinging to my heart as it would
to a sock or a sleeve or a dog.
Inside the burr was a seed of fear:
I can’t protect others from harm.
And my teacher said, her voice warm,
Let the fear of repercussions be here.
But the longing to control kept
digging into me with spines sharp and long.
Include it as part of the whole, she said.
And I thought of wild burdock
with its big soft leaves,
how naturally it grows in a field.
How it’s evolved, a product of life itself.
How the root is used to heal.
And I was stunned by the fact
that burdock belongs to the field
as much as wheatgrass,
dandelion, wild iris, wild rose—
the burr one part of the whole.
And I knew myself as field.
I imagined inside me
the grass, the sunflower, the vetch, the trees,
and the uncomfortable burr of anxiety,
which, though painful, belongs.
I focused on whatever it is
that holds it all. Inside me,
acceptance opened like a song.
*with thanks to Joi Sharp for her words (in italics)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged acceptance, belonging, burr, resistance | 7 Comments »
Past the blacktop, past the swings
a girl has wandered into tall grass,
dry and golden and high, and look
how she tucks in beneath the seed heads
and makes in the stems a nest,
lies on her back and looks up at the sky.
She can hear the screams and squeals
of other children as they play.
But here she is daughter of silence,
fallen angel of sunshine. There are wings
inside her breath. What does she know
that I have forgotten? What does she
love that I now squint to see?
Where does she still live in this woman,
this wanderling who was me?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aloneness, childhood, grass, inner child, nature | 13 Comments »
My heart is an unfinished poem
I begin scribbling every morning.
By noon, I sign my name.
By night, the whole page is erased.
I used to lament the erasing.
Now I love the blank more
than any scribbles I could make.
To love you is to lose my story.
Sometimes, when I am brave,
the hand doing the erasing
is my own.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ars poetica, erasure, love, story | 10 Comments »
inspired by a line from Gwendolyn Brooks
We real. We feel.
We rise. We loss.
We stall. We fall.
We candle. We moth.
We flag. We tune.
We plunder the moon.
We wish. We rash.
We ravage. We crash.
We cry. Retry.
Forgetful, we why.
Why? We pray.
We star. We clay.
We find. Remind.
We shed. We climb.
We slip. We heal.
We hurt. We real.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged humanness, rhyme | 4 Comments »
It’s elegant, really,
the way protein in eggs
and gluten in flour
create a structure
strong enough that when baked
will stretch without tearing
and set without leaking,
thus trapping the steam
that makes the thin batter rise.
And though it is science
and chemical reaction,
though we could write
an equation to explain it,
still the innocent glee
that rises in us
each time we peek through
the oven window and witness
the golden ballooning.
Perhaps astonishment
is the secret ingredient
when mixed with attention
that creates in us a structure
strong enough to contain
an expanding joy.
How delicious it is,
the chance to celebrate
the familiar, to find
what is marvelous
in the daily, then offer it
like bread to each other.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged astonishment, baking, popovers, science | 4 Comments »
I walk out the door and
lie on the ground and
let the earth hold me,
let the sun soak me
let breath do
what breath does.
And if there is any
part of me that doesn’t know
it is part of everything,
it is lost in the vast peace
that fills me when
everything warms
and the kingfisher flies
over my silence
with his clackclackclack
and the air smells of river
and greening grass.
It doesn’t last,
but for this small eternity,
I am what a wind is,
only more, only less.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged nature, outdoors, quiet, silence | 4 Comments »
for Eduardo Rey Brummel, on Earth Day
I walk on the long dirt road
with fat bumblebees
and dark red rocks,
not to distract myself
from you in your death room,
but to bring you with me
into this miraculous day
with it wild iris just beginning
to push through the earth
like curious green tongues
and its patch of buttercups
blooming right through me
all waxy and yellow and bright.
Far away, your heart is erratic
and your breath is slowing.
Far away you are becoming
less flesh and more mystery,
less the man who wrote
uplifting quotes on the lunch board
and more whatever it is
that drives the willows to blush,
whatever it is that causes the crows
to caw, then hush, then caw again.
You who called me Hermana,
you showed me how to be more kind,
and now you grow within me,
an essential part of my biome.
What gift more precious
do we have to offer than kindness?
I don’t know how it happens,
but the day is more beautiful
because I carry you with me—
even the thorns seem
to call for my honest attention,
even the leafless oaks,
even the dry stream bed
waiting for rain.
Dear friends,
If you know my friend Eduardo and did not yet know about his stroke and his recent blood infection, I know this is not easy news to receive. He responded to almost all of my poems here on this blog with such thoughtfulness and support. One of the most kind, generous people I have ever met.
If you would like more information, you can find it on his caring bridge.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged connection, Earth Day, eduardo rey brummel, kindness, nature | 14 Comments »