for Thilo
To the unmoving body
of the tiny bird in the grass
below the kitchen window,
the young boy brings a plate
of white safflower seeds.
Hours later, when the bird
has not moved, one wing still askew,
the boy weeps. His father and I
sing a death song as we carry
the almost weightless body
in a brief procession across the yard.
The boy and his mother walk
behind. Her fingers lightly rest
where his own wings would be.
There is a tenderness inside us
that knows every life is precious
and refuses to pretend otherwise.
Later, the boy carves a chickadee
into the top crust of an apple pie,
making of grief something beautiful.
I want to protect that part of him—
the part that feels, that respects,
that honors. I want to awaken
that part in us all—the part
that dares to care deeply,
the part that knows every
life matters.
Posts Tagged ‘love’
After the Chickadee Hits the Window
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boy, caring, chickadee, feeling, grief, love, pie on March 14, 2026| 6 Comments »
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.
The Rooms of the Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, heart, love on February 21, 2026| 8 Comments »
for Rachel
I thought my heart might need a makeover.
There are well worn paths from all the entrances
and exits. The color palette hasn’t changed
since the early seventies when the heart
was first decorated. And the four chambers,
sometimes feel a little tight. Shouldn’t I make it
a little nicer for guests? I spoke to the interior designer,
asked her to spiff it up for me. She smiled and said,
Sweetheart, there’s nothing more beautiful
than a well-loved heart. Its colors are always true.
You don’t need anything new or fancy. Every ding,
every scratch has made you who you are—
a home for love. Let it be.
The Spreading
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, daisies, humanness, kindness, love, monks, wounds on February 10, 2026| 6 Comments »
There’s a place in my brain where hate won’t grow.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Jerusalem”
Sometimes a seed of compassion
slips into my brain and lands in a place
where before only anger could grow.
These seeds appear
when I stop seeing humans
as only our actions and start
seeing all of us as walking wounds.
They appear when I see others
finding ways to be generous, to be kind.
If I offer the seed the barest scrap
of attention, it begins to grow roots.
Then a stem. Then seed leaves.
More leaves. A bud. But what allows
for this growth is far beyond me—
rather some gift that comes through
when me and my story get out of the way.
This is how I sometimes come to find
a whole field of inner daisies thriving
in a place I once torched to the dirt.
At first, they needed my constant care.
Then they reseeded again. And again.
They spread into such unpredictable
places. Sometimes outside my inner world.
The same way the seeds arrived in me.
Through kindness. Through love.
It’s beautiful.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Dear friends,
Today was day 120 of the monks walking from Texas to Washington DC to bring awareness to mindfulness and peace, compassion and connection. Today, after 2,300 miles, they arrived. What an amazing way to shine light on what is good inside all of us. How do we embody peace instead of arguing for it? What a question to live into.
Gesture
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, kindness, kyra, love, rocks, simple, small gesture on February 7, 2026| 2 Comments »
Most days, I rearrange the small stones
on the front porch into a new semblance
of a heart. What moves them? The wind?
A mouse? I gently reshape them with my palms.
They have been here over four years now,
since the day you placed them beside the door,
the day my son did not come home.
Two dozen-ish penny-sized gray and white stones.
Rough to the fingertips, soft to the spirit.
You taught me how simply we might care
for each other with whatever is here.
Small rocks. Fallen petals. Tall stems
of dry grass. A touch of love.
Two willing hands.
Currents
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, flood, love, river on January 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I walk to the river and see how the banks
have changed since even two days ago.
Now water flows through the bright red willows
instead of staying in the main channel.
I remember how it used to run right here
where I am standing until a mighty flash
flood altered its course and there was not
a damn thing anyone could have done to stop it.
There is, even now, a rising flood of love.
It will move anything that tries to impede it.
When I can’t hear the flood of love,
that’s when I know it is up to me to share love
so someone else hears the currents I’m listening for.
Together we make unstoppable waves—how they roar.
A Great Shining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, connection, impossible dream, love, moon, peace on January 23, 2026| 1 Comment »
inspired by Maya Stein’s 10-line poem form
What if, in this moment, every person on earth thinks of someone who makes us feel cherished, known, safe? What if we let ourselves linger in this moment of connection? What might happen inside each body? What might happen in the world as in unison our breaths begin to even and slow? Would the pulsing of our hearts begin to synch, the way heart cells in a petri dish come to keep time with each other? What is earth if not a great experiment in which we are all both observer and observed? How long could it last, this rhythmic communion between jailor and prisoner, oppressor and oppressed, between fighter and fighter, maker and destroyer, parent and child, liar and believer, all of us thinking of love? Foolish, perhaps, to imagine such impossible moments. But more foolish not to imagine such things. Even now, I’m thinking of someone. It feels like the moon is inside me.
How It Comes Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged feeling, flame, friendship, grief, love, sorrow on January 4, 2026| 10 Comments »
I don’t know why sometimes
the same story can feel like ash
in the mouth and another time
like flame. Each time the story
is the same, but sometimes,
it scorches to share it.
I am thinking of today, how I read
a poem about your death
as if there were no more fuel to burn,
reciting a fact, as if saying,
There is no snow in the yard.
Five minutes later, I read the same
poem and had to restart four times
just to get past the first two lines.
I prefer the flame. Prefer to be moved
by how much you’ve changed me.
Not to dwell in the loss, but not
to shy from being torched by love.
Inner Mars
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desolation, love, mars, space on December 22, 2025| 2 Comments »
I want to travel the desolate lands of the heart,
enter red places where nothing else grows,
where there is nowhere for either of us to hide,
some vast, unmapped space where we cannot
know what we will do next. There are canyons there
forged by currents of tears so old we no longer
remember their source. We could walk
to the canyon’s edges, stand at the cliffs,
drop our names and stories into the abyss.
What would be left of us to watch the sun setting
beyond the horizon, the sky changing from red
to blue before the irregular moons begin to rise,
one quick and bright, the other ghostly and slow?
In the midst of such barrenness, would we finally
trust just how lush, how exotic, how feral and fecund
this chance we’ve been given to be alive, to love?
The Gift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, fragile, love, suicide on December 12, 2025| 2 Comments »
for B
The day after you died,
everyone was you.
Every man behind a counter,
every woman on a phone,
every child, every grandmother,
every stranger in the airport,
every driver on the highway.
Every voice was your voice.
Every face was your face.
Who else, I wondered, was
certain they could not live
another moment? Not knowing
the answer, I imagined love
carrying all our fragile,
floating hearts. I had never
been more certain of
the holiness of everyone.
This, the gift you gave me.
When I arrived home, I lit
a candle. It was your name
I said into the flame,
wishing you peace.
It was you I wept for,
you I wished for.
And you were everyone.