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.
The Talisman
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, grief, love, protection on December 2, 2025| 7 Comments »
It wasn’t the time he taught me to ride
without training wheels. Wasn’t fishing
on the lake for crappies or hunting
in the Wisconsin woods for squirrels.
Wasn’t the cassette tapes he made me
when I moved away from home or the rare tears
he cried when I left. It wasn’t the way
he forgave me when I forgot to call
on his fiftieth birthday. Wasn’t the white
sweater he bought me the year before he died
because he said I looked so beautiful in it.
Or maybe it was all those things—everything
he did, everything he was, every quiet touch and
unsung sacrifice ,so I never once doubted his love.
His love as solid as he was. His love stained me.
Can never be removed, no matter how fiercely
the world tries to scrub me of hope.
Every day I take in the violent raids,
the infinite ways we defile and dismiss
and destroy each other. And still I can’t unknow
his love, can’t untrust we are capable
of such goodness, such unflinching generosity.
His love, the talisman I wear in every cell.
It protects me not from the horror, but
from the error of believing the horror is all.
There is also how he hummed to me
when I was scared. How he cheered for me,
even when I failed. How in my most vulnerable
hours, he held me and whispered my name.
Walking at Night after the First Big Snow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, love, moon, snow, winter on December 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I want to live
my life like
a night made
bright by
moonlight
and snow—
there is
nothing I can
hold onto,
nothing I can
even touch, but
there is no
doubt how real
the light is,
no denying how
that faraway
light reflects
to hold me.
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.
Too Late?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, love, sunset, time, timing on November 28, 2025| 7 Comments »
By the time we arrive at the cliffside
to watch the sunset, the darkness
has already come. But because
of the ink-ish sky, we see thousands
of yellow lights glitter across the harbor.
And moonlight on the water makes
the blackened surface shine. How often
do I think I’m too late, only to find I have
arrived at just the right moment,
the moment in which there is a beauty
beyond the one I knew to wish for.
Like how, when I thought it was too late
to forgive, forgiveness arrived with its
soft and generous hands. Like how when
I thought I was too late to love, love
bloomed like a sunset, radiant and blazing,
and stayed, the way sunsets never do.
Like how I believed I was here to adore the light,
I came to learn how exquisite, how
lavish, how astonishing, the dark.
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.
Such Gratefulness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, humility, love on November 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I messed up. Big.
It was, you can imagine,
embarrassing.
My daughter put her head
on my shoulder,
her body warm, her
touch soft.
It’s okay, mom, she said,
her voice gentle and small.
Everyone messes up.
She slipped her hand
into mine. For a long time
we sat that way.
What was big became
small. What was small
became great.
In one humble moment,
the vast arc of love.
I felt myself dissolve
into that arc.
How He Loved to Fish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, father, fishing, love, memory on November 5, 2025| 4 Comments »
Dad could barely walk,
but put a rod in his hand
and pass him a bag full
of tackle and bait
and that man could traverse
over mountains or swamps
to get to the place
where the bite was on.
I remember him reeking
of fish, his thick hands
covered in slime,
his smile wide as a river
is long. He was chatty,
then, giggling each time
he’d feel the sharp tug
on the line, whistling out
a long ooooooh-eeee as he
reeled and pulled.
How he thrilled in every
part of the act—
the planning, the waiting,
the catching, the gutting, the eating.
Years later, I can almost
scent it here on my hand—
the pungent, sour smell
brings me back to when Dad
was most alive,
not those hours in the ER,
not those years in the chair
swaying back and forth
to dance with his pain, no,
a straight path to those days when
his eyes were bright with ecstasy
and the current of his joy so strong
it still carries me, even now.
What No One Else Can See
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, love, mother, string on September 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Every day I fasten
my heart to yours.
with invisible strings,
strings so light
you might almost forget
they are there
until you start falling
from any edge
like disappointment,
like betrayal, like
forgetting you belong.
The strings don’t
keep you from falling—
that’s just not
how it works.
Nor could I ever
control you with them
like some well-
intentioned puppeteer.
But feel that tug?
It’s my heart
reminding yours
we’re connected.
And remember those
simple phones we made
with string and two cups?
When you need me,
make of your heart
a cup. I will do the same.
I may not catch
all the words,
but I’ll feel them
with you, wherever
you are, I’ll
feel them.
One Permanence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haikuling, integration, love, stain on September 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »
they’ve become us now,
integral as bone, as skin
these stains of love
Adapting
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adapting, love, loving the world, moss on September 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The way moss softens
the edges of what is hard.
The way it thrives in shadow.
Oh heart. The work
of loving the world
can look so much
like moss doing
what moss does—
growing in places
that seem uninhabitable.
It doesn’t even need roots
to survive.