It used to annoy me,
the way my husband
cleans every trail
he walks on, slowing
down to kick off the
smaller rocks,
stopping to pick up
and toss the larger ones.
Every. Single. Rock.
Perhaps it still annoys
the part of me that loves
a heart pumping pace,
but now I honor how
he has chosen this one
small act as one way
he can serve the world.
But if he could, on our daughter’s
paths, pick up all the obstacles,
I don’t think he would.
Such a gift for a father to give:
An open hand and heart that says
I will pick you up if you fall.
An open hand and heart that says
I trust you enough
to let you stumble at all.
Posts Tagged ‘allowing’
Different Paths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, father, Father's Day, hiking, poem, poetry on June 20, 2026| 4 Comments »
I, Who Did Not Die That Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, death, love, parts, resilience on January 17, 2025| 23 Comments »
“I, who did not die …”
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Making a Fist”
I, who did not die that day,
also died. Not all of me,
but part of me: The part
who believed I could change things
beyond my control.
The part who believed
any of us can save someone else.
What a terrible freedom to know
what I cannot do. The part
who did not die is the part
who loves—loves what was,
loves what is now, loves as long
as I am able to love.
The part who did not die
is the part who still thrills to see
the twitchy-nosed bunny
streak across the grass
and the near-full moon that bathes
me in cold blue light. The part
who still lives is not afraid to grieve
and lets herself be turned
toward fear and learns,
learns to meet even heartache
with wonder. Like a tree, I grow
from the soil of all I have lost.
I, who did not die that day,
am still being taught how to touch
the wound and let myself be sung
by the part still wildly alive.
The Fence Post to the Mist
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allegory, allowing, ephemeral, impermanence, mist on October 21, 2024| 11 Comments »
Show me again
how you do that trick,
the one where you roll,
where you lift,
where you disappear.
Letting It Be
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, fixing, gardening, poem, poetry on August 26, 2019| 4 Comments »
There is a carpenter in me
with an impressive tool belt.
She thinks she can fix everything.
Every time there’s a leak in the ducts,
she blames that darn condensation,
and whips out her metallic tape.
And when there’s a heart break,
she mumbles something about not meeting code,
then takes note of all the cracks,
all the places where it’s falling apart,
and gets to work: cleans up and preps
new concrete to hold things together.
I know she’s doing what she knows best,
I know she has good intentions.
But today, while she runs off to seek
just the right hammer, just the right nails,
I take those leaky ducts and that broken heart
into the garden and dig potatoes.
The soil is cool and slips soft
though my fingers as I sift for yellow fingerlings
and red-skinned Desirees.
There is a gardener in me who doesn’t try
to fix anything. She says in a quiet southern drawl,
Sweet thing, bring all that brokenness here
and let it walk amongst the sunflowers.
Let it weed the carrots and pick
some calendula bouquets. And nothing
gets fixed, but something shifts as I sit
beside unruly mint, its green spears rampant,
its scent so cooling, so sweet.
One Staff
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, music, poem, poetry on March 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »
all those beautiful notes—
letting them fall from the score
and not rushing
to arrange them again,
listening as new songs arise
Reverie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, poem, poetry, possibility on June 18, 2018| Leave a Comment »
In the pond, it is easy to let go of the paddle,
to let the wind move my little boat
wherever it will. I feel no need to change direction,
no sense that one way is better than another,
no attachment to arriving on any shore.
All around me, dragonflies skim bluely above the water.
Cotton drifts through the air like midsummer snow.
Robins sing their simple song. In this moment,
somehow unstitched from the calendar,
everything seems possible—like a woman
who feared she could not love could do so.
And a day could open in surprising ways,
new worlds spilling into this familiar world.
And a chapter could be written inside another
so that we would never, ever get to the end.
What Took Me So Long
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, poem, poetry, referee, surrender on February 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »
playing referee
between the sun and clouds,
eventually I take off my stripes
to be a spectator instead—
how pleasant
without all that whistling
Two Marvelings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, gratitude, love, moon, poem, poetry, river on April 21, 2016| 2 Comments »
just another full moon rise—
is it any wonder
I can’t stop bowing?
*
how, I said,
to the river bed
do you make
of yourself a home?
I let the flow shape me,
the river bed said—
flood, current,
shimmer, stone
Ever feel as if you’re pushing and pushing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Year of Being Here, allowing, poem, poetry, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on October 8, 2015| 4 Comments »
and exhausted from pushing and not getting anywhere?
Today, a fabulous poetry site, “A Year of Being Here,” published a poem of mine about just this experience.
I love this site, love reading the poems daily and going back through the archives. You can find it here: A Year of Being Here: Trommer
Only in Retrospect Can I See What I Did
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, blank page, expectation, poem, poetry, unfolding, vision on January 8, 2015| 5 Comments »
This blank page of a day.
Last night, I had already crumpled
up the paper and thrown it in the trash.
With twin fists, I made it so small,
told myself there were no stories
I was interested in knowing.
This morning, picking it up again,
I watched the paper unrumple itself,
and unfold and unfold until
it was a million million times larger
than any page I could imagine,
big enough to have any story
fit on it, any story at all, even
happily ever after.
On a Day When I Ache for the World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, nest, poem, poetry on September 24, 2014| 2 Comments »
inspired by The Nest by Teddy Macker
Teach me, world, to weave
a nest with whatever scraps I find—
sticks, dry grass, old thread,
twine, barbed wire, plastic bags,
the sad headlines of war. Teach
me to make a haven out of mud
and shit and thistle down, a cozy
space, just room enough, no more.
And then, though I’ll grow comfortable,
teach me to fly away from whatever
comfort I’ve made—not because
I think I’m going somewhere better,
but because there is a rising
in the blood that says go. Teach
me to take nothing but my song
and the silence inside each note.
It’s Only When You Ignore them that they Start to Gain Control
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, poem, poetry, running, voices on August 28, 2014| 2 Comments »
If you must know, I was scared,
running above tree line in a snowstorm,
unable to see more than twenty feet in front
of my slipping feet. And no one else around.
So why did I keep running? Was it courage?
Determination? Stubborn foolishness?
When the story ends happily ever after,
it is easy to forget there was another possible ending,
but sometimes these alternate worlds
invite themselves into our thoughts,
strange tides of what if? and what then?
Though they are unpleasant, I welcome them.
Why not? I am safe, and they are like
the mean girls, the ones who say the cruelest things,
but because there is no truth in what they say,
it’s not so hard to just nod my head and smile.
I Thought So Much Depended On It But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, loss, poem, poetry, stone, surrender, wanting on May 16, 2014| 1 Comment »
After begging the stone
after asking the stone
after wishing the stone
after entreating the stone
after bribing the stone
after wanting the stone
after beseeching the stone
to become a butterfly
I sit with the stone
and notice how quiet
it is in my head when
a stone is a stone.
Can You Hear Them?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, anticipation, being present, poem, poetry, waiting on January 9, 2014| 1 Comment »
The snow begins
then stops to fall.
In the alley, brown
tracks run against the white.
The gray folds through the air
and unfolds. Nothing
about this day seems
capable of settling in.
It is a like a woman
thinking about what
she wants. The blossoms
of her thoughts open
like roses in fast forward.
They wilt and dry in similar
fashion. They are out of season.
This does not stop them.
Sometimes we like to think
we are waiting. Waiting
for something marvelous to happen,
or waiting for an ache to disappear,
or waiting for gray to be
something other than gray.
And sometimes we see what
a gift it is, this indecisive day,
this watching imaginary blooms
that seem so real you can almost
smell the red perfume, almost.
Outside the window,
it is snowing again. No,
not snowing. But the gray
it has settled in and now
the dirty tracks look
like empty staves and anyone
listening might hear through the glass
how the birds don’t wait
to fill in the space with song.
When I Drop the Stubbornness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, love, marriage, poem, poetry, space on December 25, 2013| 1 Comment »
When I Drop the Stubbornness
All day I practice
noticing the space
between us, feeling
the subtle tugs, the
repulsions, the charge,
the release. Sometimes
I forget to let it happen,
try to force a nearness or
a solitude. That is when
I can feel it, how real
the space is, almost as if
you are one and I am another
and the space between us
is a third. I have noticed
that when you and I,
at the same time, allow
ourselves to lean—
is that the right word?—
perhaps it is more that we
open to that space,
then I notice how easy it is
to be for each other
as the water is for the moon,
holding entirely without
holding at all, not changing
and utterly transformed.