after Jim Harrison, “Seven in the Woods”
Yesterday, I was seven, swimming
in the lake. Thin prickly seaweed strands
winding around my legs. I would do anything
not to touch the silty bottom. Bullheads
lived there with their slimy dark skin
and strange thick whiskers. On the surface,
I was sleek and playful, baring my skin
to Wisconsin sunshine, splashing
and being splashed by my brother,
crawling through waves with wild joy,
my arms slicing through green water,
my strokes strong and quick.
Almost fifty years later, I feel it,
the welcoming warmth at the lake’s surface,
the cooler layers deeper below.
I remember the simple pleasure
of the dead man’s float,
a seven-year-old girl playing with how to die.
What did I know of death then,
except that it meant to hold my breath,
to let my body be held, a game,
really, just another way to play,
like Marco Polo, like racing to the raft.
The stakes feel so much higher, now.
Death not a friend, exactly, but
a companion nonetheless.
I channel her back, that seven year old,
remember her fear of the depths.
The bottom’s not so bad, I want to tell her.
You can be playful with death, she giggles back.
Posts Tagged ‘lake’
Seven in the Lake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, childhood, death, lake, play, swimming on October 6, 2026| 4 Comments »
Sometimes when I am stuck,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged deeper, inner world, lake, stuck on September 25, 2026| 5 Comments »
when I feel as if my feet
are fashioned of mud
and my tongue is made of sand,
when my thoughts and emotions
grow stagnant as if trapped
behind a dam of self,
that is when I remember
there is a silence inside me
ever waiting for me to slip into it.
That silence is patient as a lake
untouched by wind.
No matter the storm
I perceive outside me,
those inner waters remain still,
still enough to mirror the outside world
without their inner depths being changed.
Sometimes I wade at the edge.
Sometimes I feel it, the invitation
to not only wade, but to swim,
to dive into the depths of the unknown,
trusting it always gets deeper.
I notice that when I dive in
it scares me to not feel dry.
I notice that when I dive in,
it is then I am most alive.
Now when I feel stuck,
it feels less like a problem
and more like a chance to see
where I’m in the way,
a chance to wonder what else is here,
to enter the lake of the unknown
with a willingness to be changed
by what I find there.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
A Closer Look
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, curiosity, daughter, father, lake, science on June 18, 2024| 6 Comments »
I recall how dad gave me glass vials
and encouraged me to go to the lake, take samples,
then bring them back to the house
where he’d taught me to use a glass dropper
to put a small bead between slide and slip,
then focus the microscope
to spy on all the life pulsing there—
thin oblong shapes and zooming dots,
spinning green circles and segmented strands—
it was like eavesdropping on adult conversation,
like being given the key to enter life itself,
and I, an eager traveler into invisible realms,
spent hours staring into that intricate world.
Memory is, sometimes, a chance to meet
a drop of the past, then wonder about the world
beyond what we first see. I thought this
was a memory about lake water, glass slides,
a microscope. I look closer. I see trust.
Pulsing love. A father teaching curiosity.
Understanding the Self
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lake, self on February 3, 2022| 2 Comments »
The lake is a good example, perhaps.
Though invasive plants grow
along the shore, though
it is adorned with new piers,
though boats float upon it
and fish swim in it,
the lake is not any of these things.
Whatever is lake is still lake.
Even if you pour dye into it
and it changes color.
Even if weeds grow from the bottom
or algae blooms on the top.
And though we might call it
by different names, those names
are just strings of syllables.
The lake is still the lake.
The self is like a lake.
Though we try to label it
baker or banker or mother or cop,
should any of these labels change
the self is still the self.
Though it wears brown boots
or flip flops or goes barefoot.
Though the hair grows long
or the nails are short.
Whether its days seem perfect
or full of mistakes.
The self is the self, unperturbable.
Like a lake.
When I Need to Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, happiness, lake, swimming on July 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Tucked in my mind’s back pocket
is that evening when I ran full speed
off the end of the pier
and leapt fully dressed into the water.
The air in my clothes buoyed me for a moment
before swirling around me like a purple bloom—
and the heavy sun was orange and low,
and the water held me, refreshed me,
stole my breath for a moment,
then gave me back the gift of my breath,
only deeper, fuller, a bloom in my body.
Oh the freedom—how easy it felt to be alive,
to be afloat, to be enwombed by the world.
Everything felt right. Everything felt yes.
Sometimes, like now, when worry polishes my thoughts,
I dip a toe into that pocket and feel the splash on my skin,
hear the water lapping against the buoys, the pier.
Sometimes, like now, I jump in and swim there
long enough that when I return to this chair, this room,
I find the faint lake scent lingering in my hair,
my face still wet.
After a Graduate School Reunion on Zoom, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged education, freedom, friendship, lake on December 18, 2020| 2 Comments »
for Jennifer and Jennifer
And once again I am twenty-four
and I walk out the door
of our master’s exam and meet
my classmates down by the lake
and the day is hot and we drink cold beer
until we think jumping off the end
of the pier is a great idea, so
we kick off our shoes and run fully dressed
to the edge and launch and splash
and swim until we arrive at a party barge
full of men who pull us dripping
and life-giddy into their midst
and we do shots of something
that blissfully burns before laughing we
return to the open lake and side stroke back
to the shore where nothing’s the same
as it was before, though it still looks the same—
metal chairs still orange, our hair still brown,
the humid sky hazy, loud cheers all around—
but our lives will soon hurl us
in different directions—
to lovers and children and unanswerable
questions where the real tests cannot
be studied for with friends, and life’s master’s
degree doesn’t end till life ends, but oh,
for those few moments on the terrace,
soaking and shivering and whooping in glee,
my god, we were free, we were free, we were free.
Beside the Lake, A Note to Self
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lake, meditation, poem, poetry, silence, stillness on July 31, 2018| 2 Comments »
If you watch the heron as it stalks
amongst the tall green reeds, then pauses,
and in its pausing disappears, then you understand
something of the power of stillness.
And if you, yourself, are still long enough
to see the head of the snapping turtle
rise between the lily pads,
then you glean something of the rewards
that come with sitting still.
But if you sit expecting such rewards,
then perhaps sit longer and watch the cattails
as they waver and still, sway and still and still,
and feel how the urge in you to say something rises
and softens and softens until there is nothing to say,
until that kind of stillness becomes
the greatest reward, until you feel
stillness hold you the way the lake
holds the lily pad, the way
the silence holds a song.
in a blue boat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lake, poem, poetry on August 27, 2016| 1 Comment »