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Posts Tagged ‘metaphor’

What the Desk Might Have Said Back

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 22, 2026| 6 Comments »


 
 
Injustice everywhere. 
How do we go on like this?
The air says nothing. 
Nor does the window,
the wall, the desk. 
But the desk holds up 
the blank page I put on it. 
Holds up the computer, 
the cup of tea.
Holds the pens, the books, 
the great piles of the stuff of my life, 
as if to say, this is how you do it. 
Hold what you are given 
for as long as it is here. 
Trust what you are made of. 
That is what is doing the holding. 

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Nyctinasty

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 9, 2026| 4 Comments »

By night, the mountain gentian
closes the dark purple vase of its petals,
tightening around its most vulnerable parts,
protecting its nectar from cold night air,
from heavy dew. Everything is at stake. 
 
Oh woman who longs to stay open, 
to ever unfold, to widen your arms
in an ever expansive reach, 
what do you have to learn 
from the wisdom of wildflower, 
from the natural systole and diastole
of open and close, open and close?
 
How might your own growth
depend on learning to wrap 
those well-intentioned arms
around your own center 
and tuck in to that primary,
essential embrace? 
 

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Not That I Like It, But I Tell Myself

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 4, 2026| 12 Comments »


 
 
It is okay to be numb today, 
to be stuck, to not want to move.
It is okay to be so exhausted
with the ache of meeting the world 
that even the extravagant apple blossoms,
all fragrant and fluttersome, 
look like dingy white scraps, used tissues.
It is necessary, even natural 
to sometimes shut down, 
to let the self be cold. 
The wood frog can freeze 
up to seventy percent of its body water, 
can stop its own heart from beating, 
It knows that to freeze for a season
is one way to survive. 
It will thaw and revive come spring. 
It’s okay for a time to slow down. 
To slow to stopping.
To be more solid than flow. 
I remember the years in the orchard when, 
on the coldest nights, we watered the trees, 
knowing how the process of freezing itself
releases latent heat and becomes
a source of warmth for its surroundings. 
Oh wisdom of freezing. It’s not without cost.
Every fruit grower knows that some years, 
there are no apples. That is how it is.
Other years, we delight in what ripens. 
Those years, we feast on the sweetness.

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When I Prayed for Proof of Good in the World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 5, 2026| 2 Comments »


 
 
It’s as if I’m a vase,
I thought, as
two musicians
poured all that
hard-won beauty
into me, and holding
it, felt such gratefulness,
then stunned by how
truly I long to pour
all that same beauty
into you, my prayer
transformed:
please let me be
a pitcher.

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Faith

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 4, 2026| 6 Comments »




 
Even now, I am becoming
wind, something less flesh, more
movement, more current, less
here, more everywhere. Though
the moment I think I know this truth,
the knowing re-solids me,
makes me into clay that pretends it is wind.
But becoming clay again, I am destined
to crumble, disintegrate, until
I am dust and once again one
with the wind. How to trust anything
then, except this infinite becoming and
rebecoming—and whatever
it is that is alive inside it all.
That. I put my faith in that.

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When Feeling Alone

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »


 
 
If there is a door in aloneness,
I want to be brave enough
to stand in aloneness and not
try to walk through that door
in a fruitless attempt to escape
the discomfort of feeling alone.
How many times have I rushed
to try to make things feel okay
instead of staying with the ache?
If there is a door in aloneness,
perhaps it is fashioned
from being vulnerable enough
to feel alone, to surrender to this,
and then it’s not so much
that the door opens, more
that aloneness itself becomes
the key to encountering
an infinite communion.
All along there was nothing
to do and no one to be.
All along, everything was here.
 

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There Is A Road Inside Me

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 13, 2025| 4 Comments »



I remember the day I stopped
believing that. Then everything
was sky.

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Yellow Coneflower

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 30, 2024| 6 Comments »


If ever I needed
a demonstration
on how to lead
with the heart,
it’s you, coneflower,
that teaches me
how to shine forth
from the center,
how to grow
from the muck.
I am ready to live
the way you do,
wild and abundant,
needing dark and
cold to germinate, but
living to gather light.

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Never the Same

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 22, 2023| 12 Comments »


Sometimes a person wakes
believing they are a storm.
It’s hard to deny it, what,
with all the rain pouring out
of the gutters of the mind,
all the gusts blowing through,
all the squalls, all the gray.
But by afternoon, it seems obvious
they are a garden about to sprout.
By night, it is clear they are a moon—
luminous, radiant, faithful.
That’s the danger, I suppose,
of believing any frame.
Let me believe, then, in curiosity,
in wonder, in change.
Let me trust how essential it is
to stumble into the trough
of the unknown, marvel how
trough becomes wings becomes
faith becomes math. Let me trust
uncertainty is a sacred path.

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Fleeting

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 18, 2020| 4 Comments »



There is no need for temples … Our own brain, our own heart is our temple.
—H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama


Today the temple went to the post office.
Of course it wore its mask. There,
it met several other temples, also masked,
some of them in a hurry as temples sometimes are.
The temples joked with each other
about haircuts and lost keys and ripped old shirts.
All day—while working on the computer,
while making macaroni and cheese,
while taking out the cat litter and feeding the fish—
the temple managed to forget its own temple-ness
and the temple-ness of others
until finally, while weeding milk thistle in the garden,
a bell did not ring and a clarity came—
a brief brush with infinity that lasted a millionth of a second,
and there between the beets and the sunflowers,
was a moment when the temple was temple.
How quickly a thought comes in. Even now the temple
wrestles with its own metaphor, tries to discern its mystery
by disassembling itself into piles of knowable parts—
bricks of meaning, tiles of purpose—that, huh,
somehow, when dissected, don’t resemble a temple at all.

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Ode to the Inner Tube

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 15, 2020| 2 Comments »

 

 

 

Because you float—

that in itself is something

to admire. As we all know,

the world tries to sink us.

But you, buoyant and tough,

you carry us over cold water.

You act as a bumper when

we get too close to a rock,

to a wall, to a log. You move

at the river’s pace.

There are days, weeks,

I wish I could do what you do—

surround us with support,

make it fun, slip us

into the flow so easily

we can’t help but laugh,

even as our hearts

thump wild in our chests.

 

 

 

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Any Action, Any Action at All

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.

—Iyanla Vanzant

 

 

It’s violent, pulling the spinach

up by the roots. Rationalize

it has bolted. Rationalize

some plants will never thrive.

Rationalize that all things

have a cycle.

Despite the rational mind,

there is the actual ripping out

of the roots, the plucking

of the leaves, the tossing

of the stems.

 

But it’s just a vegetable,

you tell yourself.

It’s not a metaphor.

 

It gets harder to believe that.

At some point, Perhaps you see

there is nothing in the world,

not one thing, in which

you can’t find a shard of yourself.

Everything, everything is charged with meaning.

 

But clearing out the spinach

is a job that must be done.

So you learn to invest kindness

into your touch.

You sing as you do it,

and you say simple words:

Thank you, thank you.

 

You will make a lovely

bright green soup tonight.

In some rows, you transplant flowers

in the space left behind.

In some rows, you do nothing

and notice how beautiful it can be, absence.

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A Gift from an Amazing Couple–Think Radio

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 26, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Searching for good news? Enter Think Radio–a really cool endeavor hosted by Alan Wartes and Issa Forrest–in which they feature 30 minute interviews in episodes of Think People, Think Planet and Think Business. The videocast/podcasts are all focused on how to make a positive change in your life, in the world. My interview came out today–the art of changing your life by choosing your metaphors–all about language, frames, the brain, vulnerability and poetry. I’ve been listening to other interviews, too–Alan Wartes is an amazing host. Worth subscribing!

Think Radio featuring Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

 

 

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One Compromise

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 16, 2018| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

walking barefoot on fishhooks

so as to not hurt anyone else—

the mind says

it’s a metaphor

but the soles know better

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Throw Away the Anchor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 31, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

This is the poem

in which we kick off our boots

and leap barefoot into the boat

and sail away toward the half moon,

singing as we go, eating ripe peaches,

sipping starlight with eager tongues,

and we know it’s a poem

because in real life

I would be sea sick

and vomiting,

but as it is,

all I can do

is smile.

 

 

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Old Man’s Cave, Hocking Hills

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 28, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

Sometimes when I feel my heart

harden, become quartzite, a stone

hard enough to cut my tooth, hard

enough to cut the blade of a knife,

I let myself be led

into the narrow and moss-soft gorges

of the Appalachians.

The creek here has rendered the sandstone

edges into rounded walls

where hemlock and dark green lichen grow.

 

It’s no revelation that this church

of curves is the work of water.

Still, when my friend Paul mentions

that only because the water is moving

is it able to erode the stone, the knowledge

washes me new. How long have I been settled

in a quiet pool?

 

I have tried not to move, tried not

to be tumbled. For a moment,

I envy the rounded bit of quartzite

Paul holds in his palm.

 

No, I tell myself. That would only change

the surface of things. What is smoothed

is no less hard. I turn to the ferns

growing out of the rock. Time

for a new metaphor.

 

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A Lesson in Metaphor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 16, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

The stone, the couch,

the sink, the tea,

the broken glass,

the garden peas,

 

the knife, the cloud,

the thick red clay,

the ant, the weed,

the wheel, the cage,

 

the whale, the weed,

the scorpion’s sting—

we are the same

as everything.

 

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The Art of Changing Metaphor TEDx

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 17, 2016| 12 Comments »

Hi friends,

My TEDx talk on The Art of Changing Metaphors has finally come out on youtube! The premise: Our thoughts are made of frames, many of them unconscious. Identify them and change them, and you can change the way you engage with the world.

I hope you enjoy watching it! Let me know if you try it … and what might happen!

The Art of Metaphor: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer TEDx24401784413_60193d7757_z

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Slipping into Something a Little Less Comfortable: The Art of Changing Metaphors

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Hey friends, I will be giving an 18-minute talk on metaphors at the Paonia, Colorado TEDx event on Saturday, February 6, and just learned that it will be streamed live! (My husband asks if there are fish in that stream 🙂 )  If you are interested in watching, you can visit their website here that morning and join in … lots of great speakers, including one I love about bureaucracy (an inspiring speech about bureaucracy? Yes!), one on the upsides of envy, one on why the earth is not our mother, and many more really interesting folks … like Craig Childs. Show begins at 9 a.m. mountain time, and my program is scheduled to be just before the lunch break. Getting giddy!

 

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How Many Metaphors Does It Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 16, 2014| 1 Comment »

It all began with the dark, of course, like any good poem.
And then there was the problem of how exactly to bring in
some light. Dawn, of course, but that just seemed too obvious.
Fireflies, but that would be too childish. Bioluminescence?
Too obscure. The need: something everyone can relate to. The poem,
of course, was not at all about the dark. It was about the teenage girl
who had killed perhaps thirty men for the thrill of killing. She lost count,
she told the newspaper reporter, after twenty-two men.
But that is too gruesome to write about: the knife blade, the blood,
the groping, the new husband in the back of the car waiting with a cord, the cult.
So the poem was about dark. And for light, not the moon. No.
Too sacred, somehow, and there are just too many poems
about the moon. Light bulbs, well, there’s a metaphor for you.
And a joke, too. But the poem was just not in the mood for a joke
and despite a surplus of 40 watt bulbs in the closet,
it decided that the dark was best, after all, and
just sat there, quietly, considering the dark.

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