If Hawaii can move closer to Alaska every year,
and it does, those sunny beaches drifting closer
to aqua blue glaciers, then perhaps, I, too, can move
closer to you in my thoughts, though the gap
between us seems wider than the vast Pacific.
At a rate of 7.5 centimeters a year, there’s little
chance of my black sand and your white peaks
ever sharing a shore. For now it is enough to trust
that great unseen forces might help shift us toward
each other. Even now I am feeling it, the possibility.
Posts Tagged ‘possibility’
After Feeling Stuck for So Long
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enmity, opposites, possibility, relationship, tectonics on November 1, 2025| 7 Comments »
A Wild Becoming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged becoming, collaboration, Kellie Day, love, possibility, power, strength on March 1, 2025| 20 Comments »
And then came the day I discovered
a sky full of birds inside and around me,
all of them singing love, love, love.
Around my shoulders appeared
a cloak of stars going supernova.
In my womb swirled a chorus of waves.
How could I not have known I was
growing a crown of antlers?
How could I have missed
my whole life has been preparing me
to transform who I am for love?
Now all I want is to open enough
to let love do with me what it will.
I want to be in service to the radiance
that even now begins to shine through.
I want to lose what I thought I knew
of my story. And though fear is also here,
I want to surrender to the strange
and insistent voice of love saying,
These are the gifts you’ve been given.
Now, sweetheart, now, be the change.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
*
Well, today was such fun, friends! I spent it with my friend Kellie Day (you can hear an interview I did with her on Emerging Form here), and we created these fabulous, powerful versions of ourselves (almost six feet tall!, using paint, collage, spray paint, marker). Between each stage of art, we wrote poems inspired by process, parts of which entered our paintings (see my word-lined cloak and Kellie’s “goddess bodice”). It was such a day of self-discovery, surprising potential and infinite possibility. Maybe you’d want to join us in person May 30 when we offer a class together? If yes, let me know and I can put you on a list for information.
How It Is Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, doors, opportunity, possibility, trust on February 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
In every moment, doors appear—
not literal, of course, with knobs and locks,
but metaphoric, yes, with thresholds and casings
and simple invitations I feel
in my body, an architecture of possibility.
I didn’t used to notice them.
Was it because they weren’t there,
or because I simply had not yet learned
to see them? Now I marvel
at how omnipresent they are,
and all they ask of me is that I choose
to step through them or not.
I recognize them more in my body
than with my mind. As if the body
has spent decades learning, oh, this is what
it feels like when a door appears.
As if the mind is at last learning to say
yes, body, I believe you. Now I trust
that I can change everything with
just one step across that invisible
threshold. Or not. Now I know
once I take that step, I can’t return
to the place I had been. And there will always be
another door. Another door. Another door.
Thinking about Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, kite, possibility, Puerto Rico, war on November 12, 2024| 7 Comments »
remembering a visit to El Morro in Old San Juan
Above the vast green field
at least a hundred colorful kites
dive and soar, weave and swirl
as hundreds of families
gather with blankets and picnics—
and what would they think,
all those soldiers and troops
who for hundreds of years
fought and defended and
readied this place for battle,
would they dream it possible
the sounds they’d hear here now,
not artillery fire, not cannons,
not hoarse and desperate commands,
but for this Sunday afternoon
horn-happy music, wind-giddy whooping,
bright laughter of children rolling in grass,
and in the air no smoke, no shelling, no screams,
only the rustle and fluttery hum of kites
as they swoop and dance in the breeze.
Leaving the Theater after Mission Impossible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, fear, movie, possibility on July 14, 2023| 2 Comments »
I am suddenly wildly sure
my life is very possible.
I am not asked to leap off cliffs
on a motorcycle or land a parachute
on a runaway train. Not expected
to pickpocket diabolical masterminds.
Not forced to drive a car backwards
down a long set of stairs in a crowded city
while handcuffed to someone else.
In fact, all I’m asked to do
is have a few conversations that,
upon reflection,
don’t seem so difficult to have after all.
Just one word in front of another.
No guns, no swords, no knives.
No one chasing me with a pipe.
All I need are a few well-placed adjectives,
like sorry, like grateful.
A few true nouns,
like connection. Like love.
Everything Is Changed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, grief, impossible, possibility on January 11, 2023| 12 Comments »
I remember when everything was impossible.
Impossible to move. Impossible to not move.
Impossible to eat. Impossible to not eat.
Impossible to sleep. Impossible to wake.
Impossible to imagine a time
when everything wouldn’t be impossible.
Today I walk out into a world where,
at the same time, the sun shines brilliant
and snowflakes sift through the air.
When they touch my face, cold and soft,
it’s as if the god I am not sure I believe in
has used this moment as a chance
to brush impossibly delicate fingers
across my cheeks and whisper to me
in a voice I don’t hear, yet I hear perfectly,
everything is possible, sweetheart, everything.
In the “Wheat Field with Crows”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, possibility, Van Gogh on May 20, 2022| 6 Comments »
inspired by “Wheat Field with Crows” painted by Vincent van Gogh and “Blackbirds” composed by Kayleen Asbo
Oh Vincent, I long to pause with you
where the three paths converge in the wheat field.
We can stand there beneath the sullen sky
like two piano notes side by side,
which, when played at the same time,
rub against each other
in an awkward, uncomfortable music.
Sometimes what unsettles us
is so unbearably beautiful.
I want to meet you in this moment
before you return to a wheat field
with not a brush, but a gun,
want to meet you in this moment
before the choice, before the shot,
this moment when there are still three paths,
all of them leading beyond the frame.
Let’s linger here, Vincent,
beneath the dark arpeggios of crows,
linger here while everything is still possible.
The storm is coming, I see it, too,
turbulent and full of change
while in the honest wheat, look,
you’ve shared so much light, so much gold.
Though It Sounds Impossible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged possibility on May 1, 2022| 6 Comments »
Meet me in the moment
after the song,
a moment silent and sweeping
as the second hand
on a wrist watch,
a moment that gathers everything,
an evanescent moment
in which anything is possible,
anything at all—
the kind of moment
that feels rare
but is always here—
when we see our lives
as more shimmer than solid,
the kind of moment
that decides who we are,
then lets us choose for ourselves.
The Good News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged possibility, relief, solstice on June 20, 2021| Leave a Comment »
On this longest day
I walk right through
the line of what
I thought was
impossible, hush,
can you hear it,
the sound of fear
as it dissolves
into (oh, beautiful)
sunlight.
Following the Queen’s Lead
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, Alice in wonderland, impossible, Lewis Carroll, poem, poetry, possibility on December 12, 2019| 2 Comments »
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
I put off breakfast for hours,
hoping it will allow more time
for impossible thoughts to come.
They trickle in: World peace.
Inner peace. Healing.
Pure love. An abundance
of unrestricted hours.
Then, stymied, I put off lunch.
Put off snack. Just before dinner
I meet a sixth impossible thought:
accepting the world the way it is,
falling in love anyway.
Who wants to believe in that?
But acceptance shines
through the window like a full moon,
as if it’s the only thing that makes sense.
Eventually, the night is so bright
anything seems possible.
One Gratitude
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratitude, poem, poetry, possibility on December 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Sometimes When I Despair
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Beethoven, hope, impossible, poem, poetry, possibility on August 29, 2019| 5 Comments »
There are no barriers for a person with talent and love towards work.
—Ludwig van Beethoven
Everyone knows Beethoven
went deaf, could hardly hear
by the time he composed
the Moonlight Sonata.
I think of him sometimes
when I want to believe
in impossible things.
Like great harmony
born out of dead silence.
Like love in full bloom
despite drought.
Like finding a pocket in time.
Like hope, growing like mint.
Amongst the Nasturtiums
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, garden, poem, poetry, possibility, seeds on June 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »
There are darknesses in me,
places I would disregard.
Is it any wonder every year
I plant thousands of tiny seeds
and then wander the garden,
rooting for each as overnightly
they put up rows of tiny leaves.
How easily I forget what is possible.
Never Mind It Was a Dream
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, possibility on January 10, 2019| 1 Comment »
because when the wise old man said
that the loving itself
was all that mattered—
somehow, for that moment,
while his suggestion still hung
like perfume in the air,
all the stubborn queries
of how and why and when
that usually knock and crack
and rap and ring, they all laid down
to take a nap,
and in that fragrant silence,
what rose was the most
beautiful tenderness,
a shining faith,
how improbably it opened
like a stone turned iris,
like a bone blooming
into spring.
Reverie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, poem, poetry, possibility on June 18, 2018| Leave a Comment »
In the pond, it is easy to let go of the paddle,
to let the wind move my little boat
wherever it will. I feel no need to change direction,
no sense that one way is better than another,
no attachment to arriving on any shore.
All around me, dragonflies skim bluely above the water.
Cotton drifts through the air like midsummer snow.
Robins sing their simple song. In this moment,
somehow unstitched from the calendar,
everything seems possible—like a woman
who feared she could not love could do so.
And a day could open in surprising ways,
new worlds spilling into this familiar world.
And a chapter could be written inside another
so that we would never, ever get to the end.
One Inner Potential
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, possibility, potential on December 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »
anything is possible
but only one thing will happen—
tulip blooming on a dandelion stem
In the Fortune Teller’s Tent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged crystal ball, poem, poetry, possibility on August 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »
A dozen dozen crystal balls
and not a one will tell us how
our story ends. Opaque as pearls,
they show us nothing of our world.
A dozen dozen crystal balls,
all of them unreadable.
And still we try. We want to know
just how the future will unfold.
Instead of crystal balls, my dear,
let’s try using a handheld mirror.
Or better yet, a windowed room.
Or better yet, some hiking shoes.
Let’s see what is unfolding now
and join it in its opening.
Already much more is possible
when we don’t know where we’re going.
When I Hear Myself Say Never
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eating disorder, healing, poem, poetry, possibility on August 8, 2015| 4 Comments »
You never really recover.
That’s what the woman told me
her friend had said.
We were talking about
eating disorders.
There’s no way to make
that line sound poetic.
Her friend ran a program
at a hospital for other women
with eating disorders.
Her friend knew the subject personally.
I remember, I told the woman,
when I believed the same thing.
Until one day, it happened.
I just didn’t know
it was possible because
for so many, many years
it hadn’t happened to me,
though I tried, I tried.
Whenever it happened,
there were no fireworks,
no symphonies, no ecstatic dance,
no revelations written in clouds.
No rhapsody, no reveille, no
parade, no streams of light.
It happened so quietly I didn’t notice—
not for days, weeks, perhaps months.
Now I lean in when I hear myself say never.
What a fine time to get very curious.
What a fine time to get very quiet,
even quieter than that.
On a Night When You Feel Far Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apricot, longing, poem, poetry, possibility on March 28, 2015| 2 Comments »
I would like to find you
in the shade of an apricot tree
with rounded white petals
caught in your hair
and the hypnotic humming
of bees in our ears,
and we would lie there
draped in the scent
of warm sage and sweet bloom
and stare up at the blue
through the flowering limbs
and forget who we are
for just long enough, perhaps,
that anything could happen.