Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘paradox’

Sometimes When You Don’t Know What to Say

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 1, 2026| 4 Comments »


 
 
It’s because to try to describe this feeling is 
to render it instantly dull, flat. 
It’s like when you see a rock on the bottom
of the river—all shimmering and bright—
but the moment you bring it to the air
to share it, what seemed precious 
becomes cloudy, mundane, a dumb lump,
the stuff of filler in a suburban parking lot.
 
And so you learn to be quiet, to let your syllables 
float away like dry leaves. What is heaviest 
stays. Does not wash away. Is polished by friction, years. 
Sometimes you meet others in the river. What shines 
shines. Together you stare, stunned by the damn beauty. 
Maybe you hold hands. Watch the light as it plays.

Read Full Post »

After Watching the Difficult Film

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 24, 2026| 4 Comments »


                  with thanks to the makers of Your Attention, Please


I go to the hillside at the end of the valley
and sit beside the gray stone with his name on it.
I am in need of deep grounding.
My beloved friend comes alongside. We sit
on the ground beside the grave, frothy white 
seeds of dandelions clinging to our clothes.
We sit until the sun moves away from the valley, 
climbing toward the peaks. I do not mind being sad. 
Sad makes sense when I think of how any child 
can no longer imagine this is a world in which
they belong. This world of green aspen leaves
and alpine snow fields and delicate dandelion fluff. 
This world in which any human is made to feel 
as if they are not enough. How many? And how 
many more? I run my fingers through the tall 
cemetery grass. How green it is. My friend
and I listen to the chaos of birdsong riffling 
across the canyon. I am near destroyed
by the damn beauty of it. The tiniest drift
of cloud goes by. No, not destroyed. 
Opened. 

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

*Hey, friends, I have been going to see films at MountainFilm in Telluride this weekend, and tonight I saw such a profoundly moving, disturbing, insightful, intelligent film about the effects of social media on young people (and all of us). If you get a chance to see Your Attention, Please, it offers compelling reasons for why we might want to rethink our relationship with social media. 

Read Full Post »

So Good

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 16, 2026| 6 Comments »


 
In a world of bests, good is a relief. Best invites an argument; good is just a suggestion.
—Melissa Kirsch, “What’s Good” in The New York Times, March 14, 2026
 
 
This morning I slip out of my good bed
into my good green slippers. I drink good coffee
and play a good game of chase with my nephews.
They are good, good boys. I take a good long drive
with my good old friend and we arrive in a town
I have loved for years full of good memories 
and good people. There we eat a good dinner
and then spend a night sharing poems. 
I’m grateful for the poems that make me ache,
because it’s good to bear what’s bad together. 
It’s not easy. But real. Real good. The kind of good
that makes your whole body hum, that makes 
your hands clap and your heart stretch wide, 
feeling so good, so good, even as you cry. 

Read Full Post »

In Broad Daylight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 26, 2026| 7 Comments »


 
 
I take my rage to the river.
A heron flies into the wind.
I let myself be opened
by the great gray wings
and the great gray sky
and the great gray largeness of water,
not to rid myself of rage
but to become a clearer channel
to meet the chest-scouring,
scab-clawing, cell-screaming,
throat-burning fury of rage
and remind my heart I can
know all this rage, can be
feral with rage and still
keep on loving the world.

Read Full Post »

Once I Wanted Only Openness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »


 
 
Every day I tend it again,
this fence around our hearts.
I rebuild it each time I say no
to things that would take me away
from you. I rebuild it each time
I choose to be right here.
I rebuild it and thrill in the rebuilding,
each post of the fence is a love letter,
this fence I once tried to burn.

Read Full Post »

All This

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 11, 2026| 6 Comments »


                  after the killing of Renee Nicole Good
 
 
Into the woods I carried
my broken open heart,
knowing it rhymed with millions
of other broken open hearts,
and there, in the silence
of spruce trees and new snow
and cloudless blue sky, the heart
gaped with its relentless ache.
I so deeply loved the world and
I was so terribly upset by the world.
All this. All this. The snow was
impossibly peaceful. It softened
every broken rock, broken stick.
I felt, at the same time,
the raw wound of injustice
and the infinitude of primeval
peace, both of them saying,
remember, remember, remember.

Read Full Post »

At the End of the Year

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 1, 2026| 10 Comments »

Just after midnight
we stand beside the stove
holding each other,
your thumb slowly relearning
the portal of my spine.
Satie’s first Gymopédie
slips stepwise through the room,
the tune like starlight emerging
after a storm blew down all the trees.
We are almost, but not quite, still.
How little movement it takes,
plus an opening in the mind,
to know the body as dancing.
How little beauty it takes
to know a sad moment  
as a moment both sad and beautiful.
And what of a year? What of a life?
How much beauty can we bring
with the days we are given?
How would the years change
if we believed we were not
just moving through them,
but dancing?

Read Full Post »

On Her Birthday, a Thank You Letter to Emily Dickinson

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 11, 2025| 9 Comments »


Dec. 10, 1830-May 15, 1886
 
 
Dear Emily, your words expressed
the weather of the soul—
the hailstorm no less right than sun—
the heart has room for all—
 
you understood how anguish
is what opens best the heart—
the sadder our circumstance,
the more we speak with stars.
 
And as I am a wanderer,
your poems are the pasture—
they help me ground myself on earth
but nod to something vaster—

Read Full Post »

One at the Same Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 12, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
even wearing a real smile
what is heartbroken
still heartbroken
 
  

Read Full Post »

Strange

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 8, 2025| 9 Comments »

So darn ugly, the quince,
pockmarked and shriveling,
lumpy and mottled,
sloughing their thin gray fuzz,
but from across the room,
I smell them, intensely sweet,
exotic and milky, rose-like,
honeyed, apple-ish.
They’re like a bowl of painful
memories I’d rather not look at
and yet find myself nose-deep
in them by choice, astonished
at how complex it all is.
Ache. Beauty. Repulsion.
Desire. What most moves us
is seldom simple. Or perhaps
it is simple as this: The world
is full of the strangest gifts.
Like the scent of the quince
floral and tart. Like that
memory I once ran from
that now is treasure
to my heart.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »