My father’s mother was not the kind of woman
who would hold your hand or gently
stroke your cheek, her fingers stained
by cigarettes, roughened from years
of cleaning the houses of others.
When she came to visit, I remember her
cleaning our windows with a solution
she made of vinegar and water, wiping
the glass with sheets of crumpled newspaper.
She scared me a little. I knew love as snuggling,
reading together and baking oatmeal cookies.
Our house’s walls were thin, but held up with song.
It’s taken me decades to understand how
a devotion that smells of vinegar is also strong.
Posts Tagged ‘family’
What Did I Know, What Did I Know?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleaning, devotion, family, grandmother, love on September 15, 2026| 3 Comments »
Reunion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, fourth of july, partne, silence, swallows on July 5, 2026| 3 Comments »
After the kazoos and champagne and hula hoops,
after the blueberry pie, after the napkins folded
and unfolded and crumpled, after the impromptu
parade on the drive, after the house full of laughter
and music, after the glow sticks, the glittering headbands,
the mountain of dishes washed and dried and put away
there was that moment when we sat on the couch,
just the two of us. You held my hand. We said nothing.
Like two swallows, done swooping for the day
who finally enter the nest they have built together,
snuggling at last on the rim.
Side by Side by Side by Side by Side by Side by Side
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged constellations, family, love, night, trust on March 13, 2026| 6 Comments »
We lay on the porch in the dark
marveling up at the sky, Orion’s
belt at our feet, Jupiter just up
to the left. We chatted of satellites
and the soft milky way glow; we
named the constellations we could.
And when young Winston laid his head
on my chest and I felt the gentle ease
in his small warm weight, I was equal
parts universe and human—
astonished again by how, in this vast,
cold, expanding world, we have been given
the capacity to trust. And no matter
how bleak it sometimes gets on earth,
there are also moments such as this,
when we come together to gaze into the night
and, lingering in immensity, we feel it,
side by side by side by side by side by
side by side, the gift of loving each other,
dark though it may be.
Noel, Noel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, family, harmony, singing on December 26, 2025| 8 Comments »
for Diane
Though my fingers fumble through
the joyful and triumphant chords,
though the notes are too high
for me to sing without stridence,
and though Diane’s alto is no longer
steady as it was over twenty years
ago when we began this Christmas ritual,
still we snuggle side by side
on the black lacquer bench
and harmonize through the deep
and dreamless sleep and the child
who shivers in the cold, we sing
of hopes and fears of all the years
and though we are clumsy and stilting
and downright not good, we are singing
through the darkest part of the year,
through this tender time for us all.
The light of an ancient star shines inside us.
And as we stumble, we laugh and
sing that light back to the world.
This, Too, Is What I Was Born For
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, family, fire, gratefulness, husband on December 8, 2025| 10 Comments »
with a phrase from Augusta Kantra
To sit late at night by the small fire
my daughter has made using cedar wood
split by the man I married over thirty years ago.
To feel the good heat of it reach through
the thick muscles of my back, infusing
me with such honest contentment
I unfold in the warmth.
To feel grateful for this small constellation
of family, humbled again and again
by the tenderness we offer each other.
Is it everything, this whispery moment,
with its soft glow of enoughness,
this ease that arrives in me,
as quiet as evening, when I am able to honor
every wanted and every unbidden thing
that conspired to bring me here to this hearth
in winter’s dim light. And like a violet
that can’t help but open at the slightest warmth,
I fall in love again with this life.
And in the End, What Does A Life Add Up To?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, love, math, numbers on November 30, 2025| 4 Comments »
title inspired by Jen Soong’s poem of the same name
Two thousand eleven. That’s what it all adds up to
when we add my great nephew’s birth year with his older
brother’s birth year, plus my daughter’s birth year,
plus my own. Two thousand eleven. This number
relates to my daughter’s ease in the world and
my great nephew’s joy in making art out of acorns
and my own thrill in writing and my other great nephew’s
pleasure in finding numbers to add together. We are,
of course, much more than the sum of our parts.
But we are, also, of course, shaped by such numbers—
how many times we have walked by the sea together,
how many times we have circled the kitchen island playing chase,
how many bounces we have done on the trampoline
and how many pie day races we’ve completed together.
There is this equation in which tag and I Spy and tickling
and peregrine falcons and the tears in my eyes equal
fierce and wild love. There is this piece of paper covered
in carefully shaped numbers. There are the parabolic curves
of our smiles. There is this scent of woodsmoke
still clinging to my hair.
After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, feast, love, questions, thanksgiving on November 27, 2025| 6 Comments »
After the leftovers have been spooned
into storage containers and the forks
are all snuggled back in their drawers,
when the few who are left are sprawled
on the couch or curled on the floor,
and we’re sleepy-eyed and sated
and telling stories and laughing
at ourselves, this is my favorite part
of the day, when all of the fixing is done
and we settle in with questions we know
we will never answer, and instead
of solutions we are left holding
nothing but ache and love for the world
and for each other, and somehow
instead of despair, this utter lack
of resolution serves up such
gladness—we’re here to meet
what is hard together.
At the Grand Prix
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, family, grand prix, love, race car on November 24, 2024| 6 Comments »
Nothing like walking in the forest,
this gathering in the grandstand
to watch race cars blur past each other,
scent of hot rubber acrid in the air,
not at all like wandering through
a sun-dazzled glade, moss soft
and green beneath my feet,
but sitting near the starting line
with hundreds of thousands of humans
with my daughter leaning into me,
my husband and my stepdaughter
and her husband beside me,
and the memory of my son knocking inside,
the heart proves again how it can fling wide
its gates for many kinds of joy,
many forms of beauty, even those
we’d never considered before.
The heart can sing for them all,
as tonight when it sings along
with the high-pitched roar
of the engines, the deep bass rumble
of the earth. Why should I be surprised?
There are infinite ways to feel connected, alive.
Matriarch
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, family, love, mom on November 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »
From the hallway, I hear her
growl her disappointment
when my nephew’s football team
fumbles the ball. And by the time
I enter the door to find her
riveted to the livestream,
she’s squealing, whooping,
calling out his name,
her voice a bright wing
that careens through the room,
a raven let loose from a cage,
and I can’t help but fall
more in love with my mother
who crows with wild, unparalleled joy,
a noisy, exuberant ecstasy,
and I realize I am sky—
as if the wings of her love
shape the terrain where they fly.
She cheers louder for my nephew;
that love makes the space inside me
even more vast, even more beautiful.
Still Life on My Mother’s Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, happiness, moment, moon, painting, puzzle, time on November 15, 2024| 9 Comments »
In the painting no one did,
we don’t see the Beaver Moon,
but it is there, full and shining
on the other side of the earth.
What we do see, as if from a bird’s
eye view: the hands of three
generations of women hovering
above a square wood table.
They hold bright puzzle pieces,
and beneath their fingers, a vibrant garden
has begun to emerge.
What we don’t see is the light
and gauzy conversation—the kind
that swoops, swallow-like, through
the field of the moment, the kind
that swerves and lifts, suggesting a space
unconstrained by straight edges.
In the painting no one did, the garden
is always blooming, the hands never age,
nothing sad ever happens,
the candles on the cake, also not pictured,
are never blown out, the banter
never ends, and like the unseen moon,
the love is there, reflecting, radiant,
shining beyond the frame.
Oh! de Perfume
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, driving, family, perfume, singing on November 10, 2024| 4 Comments »
I want to bottle it,
tonight’s drive
with my girl,
both of us singing
full voice,
so when I forget
how good it can be
in this world,
I can dab it
behind my ears
and inhale again
the joy of singing
through the dark
that brazenly,
that together.
Amidst the Cold of Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, darkness, family, ice, light, memory, play, river, winter on July 23, 2024| 12 Comments »
There was that winter day when the ice floe
had cracked the river ice into giant slabs
thick as my open hand, tall as a child.
Our family gathered on the river bank
and played with the fractured chunks to make
sculptures—ice huts and ice caves and
a long ice wall that curved and snaked
through the snow along the river’s edge
like the spine of a giant stegosaurus,
jagged and upright. It’s never happened
again. The ice slabs always freeze together
or crush into bits, but that night,
we went out with dozens of candles
and lit the ice structures from within.
And the glow then, the gold that blazed
through the ice, was the kind of luminous
magic that winter seldom knows. What
was shattered and sharp, heavy and cold,
became radiance, brilliance, a visible hope
I didn’t yet know I would need, some proof
of what might transpire in the winter
of the heart—how broken and frigid,
it still might become a means
to gather beauty, to amplify the light.
Puerto Rico Haikuling Bouquet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beach, family, haikuling, travel on April 21, 2024| 4 Comments »
delayed on the tarmac
my inner scheduler
decides to nap
*
walking on blue cobblestones
we arrive
six hundred years ago
*
that man playing harp—
his voice opens doors
in the air
*
unsure what comes next
I translate all my worries
into purple orchid
*
best rainforest guide—
two-note song
of an unknown bird
*
decades of calamities
and triumphs
to be just another body on the beach
*
my tears unnoticed
I offer myself
a tissue, a shoulder
*
from the calendar squares
I fell with a splash
into warm blue water
*
night full of rain—
come morning light
my dreams shine
*
squeezing lime
into the ripe papaya
scooping out delight
*
in bioluminescent water
I write your name
watch the blue cursive disappear
*
picking your pocket
hoping
for a poem
*
no hard feelings, pigeon,
rumor has it
this is good luck
*
paddling to the island
drunk on blue
my eyes keep swerving
*
the way the ocean
never refuses raindrops—
learning to let in the whole world
*
back at the empanada café
hoping to fall in love again
with spinach
*
remembering with a start
nothing
is happening
*
a full moon
in my body—
all around me the tides
*
after floating in saltwater
hand in hand with my girl,
on land, still floating
*
between the missiles
and the song of the ocean
this chance to love
*
distilling the dazzling day
into three-lines
and one glass of wine
Somewhere in the Universe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, daughter, family, mother, space on December 24, 2023| 20 Comments »
There is this hour when my mother
and daughter and I are side by side
shaping soft red dough into tiny balls
to add to the green spritz wreaths;
the kitchen smells of almond
and butter, and there are carols
on the stereo and it’s going to snow.
Yes, I know there are thousands
of imperfect moments,
but there is also this moment
when I find myself smiling
in a small kitchen in a narrow river valley
in a vast mountain range on a large continent
on a smallish planet in one galaxy among
the hundreds of billions that somehow
all belong to a universe that’s expanding faster
than we think it should—
and as I hum along to a medieval hymn
about how a rose is blooming,
my heart scoured, my heart full,
how is it I, too, am a chord unfolding from minor
to major amid the cold of winter?
How is it I am a rose blooming bright,
faster than I think I should,
this dark season strangely blessed?
Balancing Act
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, family, father, memory, support on October 29, 2023| 6 Comments »
When I was a girl, my father
would lie on his back, palms up.
I’d step barefoot into his hands
and slowly, slowly, he’d lift me.
I’d balance above him, floating
like an angel, like a circus star,
like a little girl who trusts her dad
to support her. Fifty years later,
I still feel his hands on my soles—
even this moment, I could rise.
An Incantation for My Little Brother’s Pillow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, family, love, pillow, sister, support on September 19, 2023| 4 Comments »
(on the night before a difficult day)
Because I can’t be there now to hold him,
I will my brother’s pillow to be more soft,
will it to offer him the deep magic
no pillow actually owns—will it
to bring him dreams in which
the light is gold and the air
smells of dark violets and
white trillium like it did
when we were kids.
I want his dreams
to feel so real, so
full of love he
wakes with
a smile as
inevitable
as today.
Thank You & a Poem of Surrender
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amusement park, choice, family, grief, rollercoaster, surrender on August 14, 2023| 21 Comments »
Dear Friends,
It has been two years today since I wrote you to say that we had a family emergency and it would be some time before I wrote again. Several weeks after that I wrote to explain my son Finn, nearly 17, had chosen to take his life. And it was several weeks after that before I began writing the daily poems again. During these two years, I have received so much love, and I thank you. I thank every one of you who has lit a candle, said a prayer, thought good thoughts, did something nice for someone else who was grieving. I thank every one of you who held me and my family in your hearts. I am so grateful. As it is, it’s been the hardest thing I have ever done–meeting this loss. I honor every other person who has lost a beloved. I honor every other heart that has grieved. It is so hard, and without an enormous upswelling of love, I don’t know how anyone would do it. Your words, your thoughts, your blessings have carried me, and I thank you. Thank you for all the letters and notes today and this week–I read every single one out loud. I thank every one of you by name. I am sorry that I am not able to write everyone back individually–your words matter to me. It matters to me that you reach back. It matters to me that you let me know the poems matter to you. Thank you. Thank you. I can’t imagine doing this without your support.
Today our family decided to honor Finn’s life by going to the amusement park where we had a lot of fun as he was growing up–and one of my friends pointed out after we’d made our plan, “Life’s a rollercoaster,” and isn’t that an apt metaphor.
As you ride your own rollercoasters, friends, I wish that you, too, feel carried by love. I wish that peace finds you and makes a home in you.
with love,
Rosemerry
Riding Rollercoasters on a Difficult Day
The moment we entered the queue
for The Boomerang, we already knew
we’d be turned upside down and whirled around,
and by the time our chests were restrained
in our seats, we knew we’d consented to free fall,
to be shaken and twisted and then do it all again
backwards, but it wasn’t until the ride began,
clackity, clackity, clackity, clackity, clackity
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
it was only then, when we laughed
the whole time we screamed,
it was only then we surrendered.
Sacred Field
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, family, grief, loss, pain, paradox, sunflower on June 13, 2023| 7 Comments »
In the mural, the field of sunflowers
is always in bloom, always golden,
always opening to face the world.
How could I, tonight, not remember
another evening two summers ago
when the light was honeyed
and I stood in this very spot with my son,
two daughters and husband,
and we smiled wide as sunflowers,
our stems tall, the petals of my heart
unfurling. The image still sits in a frame
on my shelf—the last photo I have
of my son. Tonight, when I stood before
all that blooming, I broke. God, it hurt,
but I did not resist the breaking.
I stood in the middle of all that beauty,
the beauty as real as the pain,
the pain as real as any beauty,
stood in the middle of all those flowers
and cried, I cried and broke and
felt myself opening, unfolding like a flower,
my petals doing what petals do.
Surprise Treasure
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, love, mother, perspective, trash, treasure on June 7, 2023| 8 Comments »
There was that year
when my mother
turned used ribbons,
thin paper plates
and gold-painted plastic grapes
into a celebration.
Our small family sat
around an old oak table
and made hats
from the strange collection.
How festive it was,
so much more than enough.
Fifty years later
I remember the joy
when we tied those plates
onto our heads.
They were scraps, trash—
the miraculous kind
that needs only love
to make it shine—
scraps like this day, like words,
like ribbons of memory.
Why I Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark Again (and Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, family, intimacy, movie on April 21, 2023| 2 Comments »
I already know Indy will be trapped
in an ancient room full of snakes
and survive, but I watch again, anyway,
though I wince, because my husband
is on my left and my daughter is on my right
and the cat curls under the blanket
on my lap, and though I hate
how my heartrate skyrockets
when Indy is dragged on a rope
behind a military jeep, I would
watch it all again another thousand times
for just that moment when
my girl snuggles deeper into my side
and rests her head on my shoulder,
yes I would watch any night
the melting flesh when the ark is opened
just to hear beneath the soaring theme
the quiet soundtrack of her breath.