Today, for a time, I am more red rock cliff than river.
I sit and do not do.
Perhaps some part of me crumbles.
I do not resist the crumbling.
I do not resist stillness.
I am weary of resisting.
So weary that today
I promised myself
I would make time for nothingness.
What pleasure I found in not rushing,
not rising, not streaming, not traveling to,
not coming from.
Why have I put off, again and again,
the chance to be intimate
with nothing?
Yesterday, when I heard myself
tell a friend my experience of nothing
is what I think God is,
then I wondered why I fill my hours
with so much everything?
So today I cliff. I rock wall.
I sandstone. I canyon.
I sit still and undo
and meet the great nothing
that holds up everything.
Posts Tagged ‘nothing’
Nothing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canyon, cliff, nature, not doing, nothing, stillnes on March 26, 2026| 10 Comments »
Standing in the Dark on Winter Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, everything, nothing, solstice, three-word lines on December 21, 2025| 2 Comments »
The dark rushes
into my lungs.
With each breath,
I imagine I
become more nothing.
The longer I’m
still, the more
I rhyme with
the vast dark
and know myself
as the mystery
that holds everything.
For Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being, nothing, self, song on June 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »
a solstice song
Nothing to do but open,
nothing to do but close,
nothing to do but undo,
nothing to do but love.
Self as wind in the forest,
yes, self as both forest and wind,
self as unfolding unself
that closes and opens again.
Imagining Rose
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged generation, grandmother, nothing, transformation on February 20, 2024| 7 Comments »
Red were the leaves
in that Illinois fall,
red was the blood
she did not bleed,
and brittle was the straw
in the hat she did not wear
as she did not walk
to the store. Instead
she sat on the small
metal chair in her room
and did not cry,
my grandmother all those
years ago, and she
thought of the baby
she would have
with the man who
she married but did
not love, and green
were her thoughts
as the child began to grow,
green as the garden
she did not sow.
She did not yet know
how he would learn
to spin all that
nothing she had
into gold.
Talking to My Son at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, loss, mother, nothing, silence, son, stars on December 13, 2023| 9 Comments »
I miss you, I say to the stars,
The stars are not you,
but always they seem to listen,
as if what I have to say is important.
I miss you, I say again.
The stars never talk back.
Still, I listen for a response.
When I say I miss you,
I mean I’ve barely begun to understand
what missing you means.
Though I live it every day.
Though missing you infuses every breath.
Though missing you shapes me—
especially at night when I’m alone
and I find myself talking with stars.
I miss you, I say to the stars.
I hear nothing in response.
I let myself be cradled
by that nothing.
Sitting Quietly in the Night for Twenty Minutes while Nothing Happens
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, nothing, quiet, sign, stillness on September 11, 2023| 8 Comments »
Perhaps I wanted a sign—
an owl call. A meteor.
The brush of an invisible hand.
Instead, I got a sky full of stars
and an ear full of riversong
and the certainty that no matter
what happens or does not happen
in the world outside of me,
there is always, inside me,
a love that grows and changes.
Is it strange now, I am grateful
for nothing—the nothing
that teaches me
the most important thing of all.
Eternity in an Hour
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Joi Sharp, love, nothing, peace on February 16, 2023| 13 Comments »
with gratefulness to Joi Sharp
Not just to know the self
but to know the nothing
that surrounds it, to feel
how vast that nothing is,
how inside that nothing
is more nothing, and
inside that more nothing
is even more nothing.
To know that. To feel
the self held by infinite
nothing, to feel the nothing
held by the self. How quiet
everything is then. How
easy it is to believe
peace is not only possible,
it is already here. How
beautiful to meet this
truth with another.
Sweet paradox: imbued
with all this lavish nothing,
the moment overspills
with love. It’s everything.
(title from “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake)
One Cleaning the Closet of the Mind
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleaning, clothes, mindfulness, nothing, thoughts on January 8, 2023| 6 Comments »
how threadbare these thoughts
I’ve chosen to wear every day—
replacing them with nothing
Fill in the Blank
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blank, nothing, Wendy Videlock on June 1, 2022| 6 Comments »
for Wendy
Tonight, the poet with the tendrilled hair
asks us to fill in the blank.
The most important relationship
you cultivate in your life is with _________.
One person says, Love. Says another, Yourself.
And long after the question is gone
from the air, long after the conversation’s
moved on, I think about ways
to fill it in. With time. Mortality.
Uncertainty. Peace. And ultimately,
with nothing. How beautiful
to let what is blank stay blank,
a space holder for pure potential.
What if our relationship with nothing
is the most important relationship we have?
I notice how she never fills in the blank herself.
Now everything is possible.
The Price of Nothing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, Art, nothing, space on June 7, 2021| 6 Comments »
for “the lucky buyer” who “went home with a certificate of authenticity” for an “immaterial sculpture” by Salvatore Garau
What could be more valuable
than nothing? The nothing that
frames “The Thinker,” the nothing
that holds every bowl,
every vase, every bust, every thought.
Let others buy the clay, the steel,
the papier-mâché. I will be satisfied
with nothing more than nothing.
Nothing pleases me. Nothing
enchants me. Nothing,
as Heisenberg says,
has a weight. Just think
of the space here beside me
where you are not.
If someone asks me why
I have a five-by-five-foot
empty space taped off in my home
with a plaque that says I Am,
it is because I am so in love
with nothing. Imagine it—
nothing, the color of happiness,
nothing, the size of love,
nothing, the shape of god.
This poem was published in Rattle’s Poet’s Respond on June 13, 2021
Self-Portrait in Marble
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, nothing, sculpture, self-portrait on January 28, 2021| 2 Comments »
With its tiny claw chisel
Thursday has chipped
and carved, made cross hatches
and striations in who I thought I was
on Wednesday. Every day
there is less of me, and
every day I am fashioned
more into who I am, this
diminishing work in progress
in which the sculptor never
stops—once I thought
it would take forever to make
me, now there’s so little
left of the block I understand
that only what is not here
will be forever.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer970-729-1838 wordwoman.com
Watch my TEDx talk The Art of Changing Metaphors: TEDX Rosemerry Trommer
Nada
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged music, nothing, silence, stillness on February 29, 2020| 4 Comments »
written at the Carmelite Monastery in Crestone, CO
It holds everything, silence,
offers itself as a blank staff
on which every song is written—
the tiny hymn of insect wings,
the baritone of the jet as it flies
from one measure of sky to the next,
the dry requiem of rustling grass,
the emphatic chorus of crow.
How generous, silence,
am I willing to know it?
How it includes even the cough,
the belch, retching, the wailing,
the snarl, the scream, the shatter,
and scores these in concert with the hum,
the lush purr, the whisper of the lover,
the ecstatic tremulo of sigh.
There is no sound it refuses to hold.
Its patience is infinite.
So when we, like weary pilgrims,
tired of hearing the percussion
of our own footsteps, arrive at its doors,
silence receives us, welcomes us home.
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.
Eating Dinner with
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, nothing, poem, poetry, zero on January 9, 2018| 3 Comments »
What gave numbers their power was the very act of naming them and writing them down.
—Amir Aczel, “The Origin of the Number Zero,” Smithsonian Magazine, December, 2014
Imagine, says my friend, before 700
there was no zero, which means
before that there was no concept
of nothing. In my bowl,
there is only a bit of squash soup left.
I add some salt, take a small bite.
There is less. I remember reading
that numbers exist outside
the human mind. Not like
a John Deere tractor that’s invented.
Not like a sonata that’s composed.
I take another bite of soup.
it is warm and tastes of apple
and thyme. I try to imagine it,
not knowing of nothing.
What would I have said
was in my bowl now that
the soup is gone? What
would I have thought
was in the chair beside me
here where you are not?
How would it change this
all that is, not comprehending
this all that is not?
One Undoing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nothing, poem, poetry, wish on February 3, 2016| 2 Comments »
What We Don’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flight 370, knowing, nothing, poem, poetry on March 13, 2014| 2 Comments »
The distress signal. There wasn’t one.
Suddenly it was gone. Just gone.
The plane, of course, but also our sense
of what’s possible. How could we lose a plane?
The sky today somehow too big, the ocean
too vast for comfort. It would take only a scrap
of metal wing or a wail of a recorded scream
to set us more at ease—some hint of blame to rest on,
some floating debris to trace. Nothing worse than this nothing.
Nothing. Did a door fail? A meteor hit? Did
the pilot get distracted just enough? Failure
of power? A hijacker plot? It doesn’t help
that the path is unclear. Though it almost always is.
So we do what we know how to do. Make grids.
Analyze. Hypothesize. Offer rewards. Criticize.
Wonder, conjecture and doubt. And resist making peace
with nothing. There must be an answer.
There’s always an answer. 239 people know.
For the rest of us, the sky now too big. And the ocean
too vast. And our questions insatiable, starved
for a slick, for a bit, for a fragment of flight, for
anything, anything, that isn’t this terrible nothing.
There is Nothing Here for You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, nothing, poem, poetry on March 8, 2014| 2 Comments »
Nothing, how I love you.
Nothing in my hands and nothing
in my thoughts. Nothing between
my everything to do.
You are not mountain nor desert, not wild
nor tame. You are equally not juicy, not dry.
There is no anger in you, no sorrow.
There is no hunger, no longing, no need.
And still you are more yes than no.
You are entirely, uncompromisingly
Nothing. The nothing that holds up
the everything else.
Nothing, I have visited you. Felt
the ever expanding reach of you,
felt myself as nothing, infinite
and everywhere and I did not want to return.
Until there was the tiniest thought of me
that pulled me back into this world
of pomegranates and rivers and lavender
and loss. Nothing, I love you. You are everything I am not.
Strange Answers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged constant, experiment, nothing, poem, poetry, variable on September 22, 2013| 1 Comment »
In this experiment,
longing is the constant
and the independent variable
is a many purple petalled thing
and the dependent variable
is song. No. That’s not it.
Perhaps the constant
is blue. And the independent
variable has something to do
with rain, and the dependent variable
is this terrible pain in my leg.
God, I could beg. I will beg,
just make the pain
go away and let the constant be
something more like
the way the sun caught
in the clouds this morning,
which is to say something
not at all constant, not
one bit controlled. This
is the proof, I suppose,
of nothing, the way
it shifts, the way
it constantly changes everything,
even the woman
conducting experiments,
writing conclusions
in chalk on the pavement,
laughing in great waves
as the independent
rain starts again to fall.
A Gift for You My Heart Would Bring
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gift, love, nothing, poem, release on December 17, 2012| 5 Comments »
Not the song but
the silence under the song,
not the stars
but the darkness between,
not the kiss
but the longing before the kiss
and the trembling long after, and
not the snow
but the spaces connecting the snow,
not the heart
but the pulse that persuades it to move,
no not the web
but the light in the strands,
not the certainty
but the wonder that birthed it,
and the branches, bare
and the cup, empty
waiting to be filled.