These autumn afternoons
I find myself in the garden
standing amongst the flowers.
Not deadheading. Not weeding.
Not harvesting. Not scanning
for aphids. Just standing there
a few moments, hands hanging
empty at my sides. It lasts only
a minute or two before I return
to work with a clarity, an attunement,
that felt impossible before.
I want to plant an inner garden.
One I visit without a step.
One that asks nothing of me
except that I find myself there.
Posts Tagged ‘meditation’
Right Here
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, meditation, quietude on September 25, 2025| 7 Comments »
Noticing the Noticing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, holding, infinite, language, meditation, paradox on June 17, 2025| 6 Comments »
When I am most still,
there is something that holds me—
not a being, but a voice,
no, not a voice, but a transmission.
Not really a transmission, no, but a place
with gradations of color, almost like sky at dawn.
Well, no, not a place. More a placelessness.
A placelessness that holds me.
Yes. A placelessness. That holds me.
Or rather, a placelessness that is me.
And is also all that I’m not.
Oh, these words that try so hard to say something true.
They feel so small as they leave my mouth.
Like I’m tossing out tiny pebbles
into the pool of the infinite.
I stare at the tiny ripples they make,
in awe of their insufficiency.
Which is to say I’m in awe
of all that does not ripple.
With awe comes stillness.
The kind of stillness that invites me.
Invites me to notice how utterly I am held.
In the Sacred Grove
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged imagination, meditation, sacred grove on January 3, 2025| 4 Comments »
for Philip Carr-Gomm
Sometimes entering the sacred grove
is easy as closing the eyes while you sit
in a chair at home and let someone
lead you there, their voice a path you follow
to a ring of trees with roots entwined.
A sun-bright meadow in the middle.
A group of other willing hearts
who form a circle with you. How did it
ever feel far away when the sacred grove
is as close as breath, close as imagination,
real as an openness to wonder. I was there,
just this morning, my hands flat on the earth,
sky reaching in through my crown. I was there,
even as I sat in my office chair, I was there.
My hands held the hands of strangers
beside me. Alone in my room, I was there.
And after knowing the sacred grove breath-close,
all day I find it everywhere.
One Deepening Connection
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, meditation, mindfulness on December 27, 2024| 2 Comments »
each breath
a sanctuary
I carry with me
Meditation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, meditation, milky way, shining on November 30, 2023| 9 Comments »
On clear moonless nights
in the darkest places,
light from the milky way
casts shadows here on earth.
I think of how light itself
is the obstacle for seeing
other breathtaking kinds of light,
much as I, too,
am my own obstacle,
my longing to shine
sometimes interfering
with that humble, soul-stirring light
I need to close my eyes to see.
For a Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, presence, refuge, silence on May 11, 2023| 9 Comments »
So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays
And so tonight I travel
the back roads of self
to a place with no shovel,
no spoon, no pen,
no wheel, no stick,
and find there
the peace that arrives
when the idea of traveler
dissolves. And then the
road. And then the self.
Two Very Different Online Retreats
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, play, poetry retreat, workshop on September 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The Grand Embrace: Resistance & Willingness
September 13 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. MDT
$40-$100 sliding scale, no one will be refused for lack of funds
We are learning to stretch in so many ways, many of them very uncomfortable. Living right now can feel like being in a story with an unbearable amount of tension. If it were a book, we might be tempted to read ahead to find out what happens to relieve the tension. Well, we don’t get to skip ahead. And we don’t get to stick our heads in the sand. But we do have the chance to meet our resistance to the moment— our sticky, unadulterated top-to-bottom resistance. And we have a chance to practice being available to the moment. Join dharma teacher Susie Harrington and poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for a day of exploring resistance and willingness through meditation and writing.
There will be meditation practice instructions, guided meditations and silent sitting. Poetry practice will include periods of instruction, time to write, and time to share what we have written and discovered. This combination of silence and discovery can be a magical process that leads us deep into ourselves and into the world. No previous experience in meditation or poetry is required to participate. We expect many will be more familiar with one of these modes of exploration than the other and this will be an opportunity to build on the experiences you bring.
If you have any questions please contact Lisa Allee at 970-570-7936 or lisaalleecnm@hotmail.com (call or text preferred).
To register, visit https://desertdharma.org/retreats.html
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Playing with Mindfulness & Poetry
October 2, 5-8 p.m. and October 3, 8-11 a.m.
$95
It’s like recess for grownups—a chance to let your body and your mind have fun in a virtual playground. Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer will offer playful word games and mischievous prompts for writing. Psychotherapist, yoga and meditation teacher Augusta Kantra will lead light-hearted creative movement and joyful experimentation. Play is for everyone! Leave feeling more deeply connected to the part of you who knows how to enjoy being alive. To register, visit https://calmlivingstudio.com/events/playing-with-mindfulness-poetry/
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on the creative process. She also co-hosts Telluride’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club and is co-founder of Secret Agents of Change. She teaches poetry for mindfulness retreats, women’s retreats, scientists, hospice and more. Her poetry has appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion and in Rattle.com. Her most recent collection, Hush, won the Halcyon Prize. She is often found in the kitchen baking with her teenage children. One-word mantra: Adjust.
Augusta Kantra is a psychotherapist, a mindfulness and meditation teacher, and a yoga teacher. She and her husband, David, own and operate the Center for CALM Living and CALM Living Studio in Fairhope, Alabama. As a psychotherapist, she helps her clients understand and unravel the dynamics that trip them up. As a mindfulness teacher, she facilitates on-going Yoga Assisted Self-Discovery groups incorporating meditation, movement, and insight practices. As a teacher of yoga, she leads trainings at the foundational (200hr) and advanced (500hr) levels. And each week, she live-streams her fun, inspiring, and awareness-increasing yoga classes.
The Empty Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answers, bowl, dark, meditation, questions on August 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
Answers don’t arrive if you’re afraid of sitting in the empty dark room of not knowing by yourself long enough for them to arrive on their own schedule.
—Michael Thelen
Oh let me, too, be willing to sit in the empty dark
and let the darkness enter me.
Let me not pretend to know how it will be.
Let me lose my plans, though it terrifies me.
Let me not imagine any better time
to practice than now.
Let me be the bowl that sings when touched,
the bowl that is content with its own stillness.
If I want answers, let me sit with my longing.
If I want lessons, let me find them right here.
And if it is dark, let me not run from the dark,
but lean into it. And if it is light,
let me long for the light. Let it enter me.
Let me not pretend to know how it will be.
On an Evening When I Am Troubled
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, peace, quiet, solace, trees on April 12, 2020| 2 Comments »
I try to see myself
the way I see the trees
far off beyond the field—
something not at all singular
but a tiny part of a whole
that extends beyond sight,
beyond knowing.
It is a long time
before my thoughts
are airy as the silences
between their dark trunks,
quiet as the leaves
that are not yet there.
The Poem Tries
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alabama, ars poetica, augusta kantra, meditation, poem, poetry on December 9, 2019| 2 Comments »
Let yourself be danced.
—Augusta Kantra
The poem sits down to be written.
Instead, it stares at the bay.
There’s a highway in the distance
that could take it all the way to California.
The poem doesn’t want to go to California.
It wants to be present, just here,
on the sandy bank beside the driftwood.
It wants to find its inner poem.
It wants to get out of its own way,
to obey its emerging form.
Instead, it watches the tall grass
getting danced by the wind.
It sighs. The poem wants to know
what it doesn’t know yet.
And the poem wants to be good.
Dammit. It tries to lower its standards,
then judges, compares and tries to fix itself.
It lists. It sits cross legged till its legs
fall asleep. It is a book of sorrows,
a tree of anxiety, a wave of failure.
It’s a cage of empty lines. How
did it get into this straight jacket?
The poem gives up. It stares at the bay.
Watches the grasses sway. Notices
how the wind blows its hair,
lifts its hands. The poem doesn’t know
why it’s weeping. In that moment,
the poem is danced.
Who Am I?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, poem, poetry, question, silence on December 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I thought I wanted
a harmonium of answers,
a key of certainty,
a hymn of how to,
but silence gave me
the most beautiful gift—
one true question.
Inner Locating
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, poem, poetry, silence on December 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Close to the waves,
I hear only waves.
Close to the cars,
I hear cars.
Come closer,
says the silence.
Come closer,
says the heart.
Instead of Getting Riled
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alabama, bird, meditation, pelican, poem, poetry, stillness on December 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The pelican dives
into the water,
rises again. Hovers.
Dives. Rises.
Each time, the water is quick
to forget the intrusion
loses its ripples,
stills. A thought
is a kind of a pelican.
A woman is a kind
of a bay. The pelicans
will always dive.
The bay will always
return to stillness.
A woman might
learn to live this way.
Remembering How I Got Here in the First Place
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, meditation, meditation retreat, mind, poem, poetry, Susie Harrington on September 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »
“Focus on your breathing,” Susie says.
“Imagine this next breath is your first.”
And for a while, it works. I feel the inhale move
from nose to throat to lungs, feel the new air travel
through my legs and arms. Then breathe it out.
I’m curious. I follow as the breath becomes my
daughter, and I wonder how her first day
of climbing went yesterday. And that was so weird
how she was in my dream last night when
I swallowed a spider. Oh yeah. Exhale. Inhale.
The breath. My chest is rising, my hands are still,
and wouldn’t it be nice to go walk in the redwoods?
How long has it been since we were there? ’97?
’98? And inhale. There it is again, the invitation
to take the first breath, and wow, feel all that air
as it rushes in and fills the body like
the balloons at Finn’s birthday party last weekend.
That was so fun, the boys in the waning sun
playing out on the lawn. I can’t believe how sweet
they were to each other and breathe. Right. Here.
Paying attention to the places where my body
meets the ground. Butt. Knees. Shins. And isn’t
it wild how the hum of the cars on the highway outside
at first sound just like a gong. Wrong. Wrong. Think breath.
Or not wrong. Just an other invitation to embrace the process,
each thought like wind, and I, I’m rowing a small canoe.
Is silence always this loud? Someone across the circle
is snoring, and from the kitchen it smells like, mmm,
Thai curry. And Susie says, “Return to the breath,”
and for another moment, I breathe in, breathe out.
And I thank you, mind, for all this practice. You’re
so good at what you do. It matters, this dance,
this chance to be present, to show up and meet
the all that is. I so want to know what is true.
One Walking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, midnight, poem, poetry, wallking on September 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »
One Freedom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, garden, meditation, poem, poetry, stillness, transformation on September 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Filling My Purse with Commas
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged comma, meditation, mindfulness, poem, poetry, punctuation, relaxation on June 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »
All afternoon, each time
I think I should hurry,
I pull out a comma,
such humble punctuation,
and invite it into the moment—
and the comma does
what it always does, which
is to invite a pause, a small pause,
of course, but a pause long enough
to breathe, to notice what else
is happening, a slight
suggestion that right here
is a perfect place to rest,
yes, how funny I never noticed
before that the comma itself
looks as if it’s bowing, nodding
its small dark head to what is,
encouraging us to find
a brief silence and then,
thus refreshed, to go on.
Primary Relationship
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, poem, poetry, silence on March 17, 2019| 2 Comments »
Consider the generosity of silence,
how it holds the space between icicle drips,
how it meets squawk and howl
and laugh and sob with the same acceptance,
the same respect. How it asks nothing of the world
and yet is always there waiting
beneath the passing car, the passing thought.
I don’t want to live my life without knowing you,
silence, you the great loom on which all life is woven,
you the wisdom with nothing to say.
I want to invite you into all the rooms of my heart,
want to know the ways you permeate me,
how you inform every cell.
I want to find you inside every word, to know
in all my speech the silence that supports it.
I want to know you, silence, you who was here
before the big bang and you who continue to grow.
You who touch the seas and the barren rock,
the snow covered mountain, the meadow of mud,
who touched the first leaf and met the first cry,
who will touch the last leaf, who will meet
the last song. And go on.
I Finally Understood Why I Meditate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, peace, poem, poetry, silence, stillness on February 14, 2019| 4 Comments »
Nothing happened today
as I sat for five minutes in the dark,
but all day I could feel the everywhere of it,
even as the car was sliding sideways down the hill,
even as my daughter wept, even as my singing group
laughed until we cried, I could feel it still there,
the silence that holds up all sound, the stillness
that cradles all motion, the peace that supports
every disaster, the blue sky behind the clouds.
Colette Suggests I Sit for Five Minutes Five Times a Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, nothing, poem, poetry, sitting still on December 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »
And do nothing, she says.
I think about that as
I shuffle the kids and
make doctor appointments
and edit the pages and
drop off the gifts and reply
to emails and shovel the drive
and read to my daughter
and peel the carrots
and hang up the coats
and all that time, I imagine
sitting for five minutes.
Doing nothing.
Yeah, I should add that
to my list, I think,
as I open the cat food
and stack the bowls.
And there, on the shelf,
between the bowls
and the salad plates,
I feel the nothing
waiting for me, feel
its infinite patience,
feel how it is always here
supporting all this everything.
How generous it is,
I think, suddenly unable
to feel anything
but a longing for nothing,
a longing that lasts at least
fourteen seconds
before I remember
that call I am supposed
to make, that plant desperate
for a drink.