I imagined every step a step toward integrity,
toward justice. Toward language that respects
diversity. Every step a step toward equality. Truth.
I imagined every step one step closer to peace
in our country, toward peace in the world.
I am old enough to not believe in arrivals,
I am fool enough to believe in love.
I am human enough to believe in community.
I am scientist enough to know we need each other.
Perhaps some part of me wondered what good it did
for a few hundred people in a remote mountain town
to walk together a few blocks, chanting, then walk
back to the courthouse again, but tonight, in my body,
I feel it, the trust in humanity that rises when I think
of how we gathered and drummed and believed
in what our country can be. My heart beats
a new rhythm in time with belonging.
“This is what democracy looks like.”
Tonight, after we’ve all gone home,
I know we’re all still marching.
Posts Tagged ‘community’
As We Marched
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, democracy, integrity, march, politics, protest on March 29, 2026| 12 Comments »
So Good
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, good, good enough, paradox, poetry reading on March 16, 2026| 6 Comments »
In a world of bests, good is a relief. Best invites an argument; good is just a suggestion.
—Melissa Kirsch, “What’s Good” in The New York Times, March 14, 2026
This morning I slip out of my good bed
into my good green slippers. I drink good coffee
and play a good game of chase with my nephews.
They are good, good boys. I take a good long drive
with my good old friend and we arrive in a town
I have loved for years full of good memories
and good people. There we eat a good dinner
and then spend a night sharing poems.
I’m grateful for the poems that make me ache,
because it’s good to bear what’s bad together.
It’s not easy. But real. Real good. The kind of good
that makes your whole body hum, that makes
your hands clap and your heart stretch wide,
feeling so good, so good, even as you cry.
Building the World We Believe In
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bully, community, politics, standing up, voice on January 7, 2026| 10 Comments »
I haven’t given up on humans yet.
Though here in America where masked agents
pull women and men from their homes–
people who build our communities, our country–
we are so far from the goodness I imagine.
In second grade, I remember making forts
at recess with small snow balls we’d
squeeze in our hands. So carefully,
so gently, we would place them, one on top
of another to create a small home.
And then, maybe every time, when
the recess bell rang, a group of boys
would linger and at the last moment
they would kick our snow walls down.
It is in all of us, the bully, the one
who enjoys destruction, the one who
wants to feel powerful, strong.
But it is also in us all to speak out
for each other, to stand up for each other,
to say no, this is not okay. It is in us all of us
to gather the way we did in second grade
with our small mittened hands, going out
the next recess, and the next, and the next,
to build together again. Because we can.
When We Share Our Broken-Open Hearts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cocoon, community, connection on November 20, 2025| 2 Comments »
Together we weave
an invisible cocoon
fashioned from trust
and listening,
its fibers strong enough
to support a miracle,
soft enough to hold
even the tenderest
of wounds. In just days
a whole galaxy
emerges. See
how we spiral
together.
Just Before the Grief Retreat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baseball, community, funky town, grief, silly, theme song on November 16, 2025| 6 Comments »
What if it’s like baseball,
Paula says, and you enter
the room the way the players
enter the field, with a theme song?
I look around the spacious room,
chairs and cushions set in a large circle,
flowers, candles and tissues in the center.
What if, when everyone is already
sitting in the circle, you kick open
the door and make an entrance
to this? And she pulls up a tune
on her phone. It begins slow—
strings and cello.
“Funky Town?”
She laughs as I strut
to the center of the room,
knees bent and flapping,
arms pumping in the air
to legato orchestral disco.
I welcome the invisible crowds.
No ball, no bat, no ump, no score.
But there is this field where we gather
to meet what life throws at us.
There are these innings of loss,
these home runs of love, curve balls of ache.
There is this sacred diamond with facets
that light up when we talk about it,
talk about it, talk about it, talk about it,
these gifts when we realize
we are not at all behind in the count.
Oh my broken open heart, I think,
you don’t gotta move on.
You are right where you need to be.
Those of Us Who Choose to Turn Toward Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, grief, guinea pig on September 3, 2025| 6 Comments »
Somehow we find each other,
though our gathering
doesn’t fix or change the loss,
there is tenderness, even beauty,
in coming together. I have read
in Switzerland it’s illegal to own
just one guinea pig.
It’s considered animal abuse
because they are social beings.
We, too, are social beings.
Perhaps we don’t sniff and nudge
and squeak and rumble strut,
but we cradle, we hum, we hold.
We whisper soft encouragement.
Light candles. Offer tissues. Hug.
There are times when I deeply need
to be alone with my grief. Even then,
curled into myself, quiet in a quiet dark room,
even then I am held by the certainty
I am not alone. What a gift we give
to ourselves, to each other,
when, in our grief, we enter
the circle of those who grieve
and meet each other with open hands
and say I see you, brother, I see you,
sister. I know it isn’t easy. Here I am.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Reciting Poems to Each Other in a Difficult Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, connection, friendship, poetry, reciting poetry on November 9, 2024| 9 Comments »
It might have looked as if we stayed
in our respective squares—
nine separate rooms made of pixels—
but for an hour the poems we shared leaped
through the screen and into our bloodstream
until all our lines were gloriously blurred
and our wounds were gently tended
by the medicine of Berry’s dayblind stars
and Wellwood’s ferocious dance of no hope,
Hopkins’s shining from shook foil
and Roethke’s wondering Which I is I?
In another time, there would have been
a fire at the center. Someone would play a drum.
But in this time, I felt it inside me, the fire,
as poems blazed to meet the great cold.
I felt it inside me, the human drum,
that reminds me the heart beats
not for itself, but the world.
For an hour we spooned each other
the honey of poetry. Alone now,
I still taste it, unfiltered and raw,
this astonishing sweetness on my lips,
this salt of lyric communion
still feel the warmth of that blaze,
the spark still dazzling in the dark.
Let Us Gather in the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, community, food, garden, gathering on July 25, 2024| 6 Comments »
Let us gather in the garden in late July
when the snap peas are fat and sweet on the vines
and the tiny white cilantro flowers charge
the air with fragrant green. When the sunflowers
have not yet opened, but the cosmos are already
a riot of pinks and white and the nasturtiums
have erupted into spicy orange petals
and the heads of lettuce open and open
as if looking for the edges of the universe.
Let us gather when the onions are beginning
to swell and the kale leaves are big as elephant ears
and the basil is lush and vigorous and flourishing
and it’s so good to be here with our hunger,
not to consume but to be opened by goodness,
to know ourselves as part of this generous
plentiful land. It so good to be here
together amongst the ripening,
to share the living blessing, to welcome
each other into the garden of our hearts,
to nourish the seeds of all that is to come
forming even now inside our open hands.
In a Circle of Trust
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged circle, communion, community, connection, silence, trust on December 9, 2023| 8 Comments »
I love these fierce and gentle hours
when the silence between us
blooms between voices
as deeply, as profusely
as the pale pink blossoms
that flourish in pavement cracks.
I did not know how much
I longed for this silence,
Did not know how the silence would honor
each voice the way a frame holds a portrait,
bringing value and beauty to the art inside,
didn’t know how shining it could be
with its infrangible truth,
how silence invites a deepening of self
the way a river deepens and changes the canyon,
even as the river itself is changed.