It can be so clumsy,
this loving you.
I wish, sometimes
to love you like a song,
something that soars
and fills you with awe.
Instead, like today,
I seem to love you
like a bird that walks
and hops and bobs
instead of flying
and wheeling high above—
it’s seemingly graceless,
but oh love,
what I want most
is to be close.
Posts Tagged ‘bird’
Awkward, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, clumsy, love on January 28, 2024| 4 Comments »
How the Heart Remembers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, eagle, freedom, righteousness on January 9, 2024| 4 Comments »
When I was sure I couldn’t be happy,
not in that moment, anyway, that was when,
at the edge of my vision, I saw the dark wing
and looked up in time to see a bald eagle
with its white head and white tail
as it soared toward me,
low enough I could see the bright yellow
of its beak, and I swear I, too, took flight
in that moment as my eyes lifted and my heart
wheeled and my senses stretched out—
and I couldn’t stay clenched. I couldn’t.
Not that some part of me didn’t try.
It felt too good to be angry, betrayed.
There are ways the world brings us
back into its arms, saves us when we
pretend we are small, invites us back
into greatness through wonder.
Oh the miracle of wing, the marvel
of bird as it weaves through air,
the thrill of the heart as it remembers
what it is to be free.
Love Song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, crow, introvert, love, song on October 6, 2023| 5 Comments »
We think only of the one-note racket,
the sharp, harsh caw of crow that claws at silence
in warning or begging or a rallying cry.
But the crow, too, sings—
not like the Romeo warblers,
so that all can hear, no—
it blends soft cooing and rattles and growls
to woo as it nuzzles and ruffles and bows,
as if the crow knows that some songs
are better when shared so close
that the only one who can hear them
is the one for whom they are sung.
The Call
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awakening, bird, dawn, geese, messenger, sleep, waking on April 26, 2023| 4 Comments »
Dawn, and the geese announce
their landing on the pond—
and though the reluctant body says sleep,
the heart rouses to attend their arrival.
So many awakenings seem to happen like this:
when I feel least ready, least willing, most averse,
something demands I rise—
something strident, insistent, wildly alive,
saying, Now! It’s time! You’re here.
Two Days Before Spring
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, blessings, bluebird, luck, waking on March 19, 2023| 6 Comments »
Without knowing it this morning,
I woke to the day
the bluebirds returned.
Every morning it is like this—
the chance to rise into a day
of unexpected blessings.
All afternoon the bluebirds weave
through the field, perch on the roof,
bob in the grass.
I marvel at how easily
beauty slips in to help me
fall in love with not knowing.
All day I feel lucky,
like a woman given
a truth so precious
not because she deserved it
but because she woke up
and met the day.
Scavengers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, friendship, healing, vulture on October 20, 2022| 8 Comments »
A wake of vultures circled above us
as we sat on the porch, conversing,
their dark wings unflapping as they spiraled.
How did they know there would be carrion to devour
when my friends and I did not yet know?
The conversation began, perhaps, like most others.
Weather. Politics. Health. But as it deepened,
we spoke naked. We spoke wound. We bled fear.
We cast off ideas that no longer served us
and left them for dead.
God, they were beautiful,
the vultures as they circled,
their black wings backlit by the light.
They feasted on the scraps we left on the ground.
We emerged so light, so wildly alive.
Essential
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art Goodtimes, bird, friend, love, mentor on October 4, 2022| 3 Comments »
—for Art Goodtimes
When I was clay,
was mud, was
slurry, was sludge,
he said, Fly,
beautiful bird,
high and low.
When I was
nothing, he said,
I am honored
to be your friend.
When there was
nothing to be said,
he sat with me.
We breathed in
deep sadness.
We breathed out love.
All around us,
the grass grew.
Inside, I felt it,
as if his words
were prophecy,
I knew it,
the possibility
of wings.
*
Hi friends,
I realized tonight that it was a year ago yesterday that I resumed writing poems after a 7-week break after my son’s death. That break was so important–to give myself utterly over to meeting each moment and living into whatever showed up. And returning to writing was also so important–to give in to the practice of showing up with language, being very curious about what is here, and then doing my very best to tell the truth of it.
Tonight’s poem was inspired by an email I just reread from that time in which my beautiful, soul-growing, long-time mentor, Art Goodtimes said to me, among other things, Fly beautiful bird, high and low. It meant the world to me.
And so, considering tonight’s poem, it feels appropriate to share with you tonight an article that came out today in Shoutout Colorado!, in which at the end I honor Art’s influence in my life (though there is, as you will see, a misplaced paragraph in the middle of the article that should go at the end?? you’ll figure it out, because it makes no sense otherwise).
https://shoutoutcolorado.com/meet-rosemerry-wahtola-trommer-poet-presenter/
The article also talks about collaboration, the importance of practice, of “giving it away,” learning when to not give it away, and the joys of taking the slow track.
In Crepuscular Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, bird, nighthawk, opening, summer on August 12, 2022| 7 Comments »
These warm summer evenings
I take in the nighthawks
looping above the field.
I take in their fast and agile flight,
take in their long and pointed wings.
Come winter, I will be grateful
to have stored such things.
When the nighthawks are gone
and the world is dim,
I will want to remember them—
their aerialist displays, the way
they make of the dusk a playground,
the way the whole night
seems to hang on an angling wing—
Oh summer is such a generous thing.
Even the dark is charged with the thrill
of living. Even this heart, wounded
and bruised, can’t help but open
to the wheeling of nighthawks,
how they arc and sweep
as the sun disappears
and then continue their swooping
long after the light is gone.
After My Father’s Memorial
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, daughter, duck call, father, grief, memorial on July 9, 2022| 5 Comments »
We gather at my brother’s home
and his wife has ordered 57 duck calls.
They were not in time for the party,
but when we arrive to find them
on the front stoop, immediately
we open the box and almost a dozen adults
begin blowing on the duck calls—
not just once or twice,
but for twenty minutes
we make rising calls, falling calls,
sharp quick staccato calls,
calls to the beat of Bridge Over the River Kwai.
It is loud and raucous and somewhere
in heaven, my father I am sure
was blowing, too, and giggling
until tears ran down his cheeks
and he rubbed his wet eyes with his fists.
There were tears today, sobs, even,
but my god tonight how we laughed
as we made the sound my father loved—
the sound to call in the birds.
How it called in his memory, startling
and alive—how I felt him wing in—
not sure if the tears on my cheeks
were his or mine.
Beyond Words
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, embodiment, promise, vow, wedding on June 5, 2022| 10 Comments »
for Daisy
And though I expect the bride
to say I do, I don’t expect her
to say it with such sweet candor,
both syllables thrumming as if
they each have a heartbeat of their own.
I do, she trills, thrilling in the promise
to have, to hold,
to love from this day forward.
Her voice is a meadowlark,
a bright flush of wing and song,
and what can I do but laugh
and weep into that golden moment
when I and the others gathered
know ourselves not just as witnesses
but as the lucky wind
that touches such beauty
then lifts it up for the world to see.