that morning in the Cajun restaurant
when the kids and I sat in the corner at a small
square table and after placing our breakfast order,
we arrived in Tashbaan at the home of the Tisroc,
following Shasta who had escaped being sold
as a slave. The waiter brought us eggs
and roasted potatoes tossed with thin slices
of softened red pepper and onion, splash of vinegar,
which we ate as we overheard the Tisroc discussing
the Narnian’s escape and the plans to kidnap
Queen Susan. It was hours after the waiter took
our plates, when the restaurant was fully empty,
that we re-emerged into the world of camping
and swim lessons, all of us fed by the magic of story,
a magic so potent I feel it still, not just the story
of Shasta, but the story of a mother and two children,
how they slipped into their own world, bodies leaning in
toward each other, hearts thundering, eyes bright.
Posts Tagged ‘reading’
Fourteen Years Later I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mother, Narnia, reading, restaurant, story on November 4, 2025| 8 Comments »
Not The End
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged books, daughter, mother's day, reading on May 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »
A girl is curled into her mother.
The sun has long since gone down.
The night is warm and the room
is lit by a single orange globe
hung above the easy chair.
The girl could not be any closer—
even her ears are curled in
to the voice of her mother.
And if there is a world beyond
the chair in which they sit
and the book they read,
they are not aware of it.
Their imaginations are swirled
together into a world of talking
badgers and valiant mice and
betrayal and war and love.
Fifty years later, that girl
sometimes catches herself staring
in a mirror, stunned by a gratefulness
so deep for her own almost magical story,
a story in which for years she could sit
on her mother’s lap, rapt in a book,
both of them agreeing, just one more page,
and then, just one more.
One Inner Weather
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, reading, storm, weather on February 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »
while I didn’t look up
from the storm in my book
the whole yard filled with snow
Poetry of Presence II Book Bash!!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Poetry of Presence, reading on June 26, 2023| 2 Comments »
- WHAT: A celebration of Poetry of Presence II: More Mindfulness Poems (published May, 2023). More details about the anthology below.
- WHEN: Tuesday, June 27, 2023, 6:30PM Central (7:30PM Eastern, 5:30PM Mountain, 4:30PM Pacific)
- FREE BUT REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
- THIS EVENT WILL NOT BE RECORDED.
- FEATURING Annette Grunseth, Christen Careaga, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Marjorie Saiser, Laura Ann Reed, Thomas Smith, Ellery Akers, Gloria Heffernan, and Barbara Crooker. They will read one of their own poems plus another poem they appreciate from the collection. The program will conclude with a brief conversation about the importance of (mindfulness) poetry to a healthy society.
ALSO … friends, I wrote a companion book for this anthology, Exploring Poetry of Presence II: Prompts to Deepen Your Writing Practice. There are 88 invitations to write on your own, leaping out of the poems in this collection.
“Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has always been a wise and gentle guide, leading us into deeper presence with her luminous poems. Yet what she has crafted here, as a companion to an already soul-nourishing anthology, is nothing short of a sacred text that will lift you up, and keep you company on the whole human journey—from joy to loss and back to the joy of full aliveness again.”
—James Crews, author of Kindness Will Save the World
Why I Read Poems
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, poetry, reading on January 19, 2023| 9 Comments »
It is so little, I think,
what a few words can do,
and yet today,
after reading
a very small poem
my heart opened so wide
a whole life rushed through—
such a current of love,
somehow contained
in the banks
of so few words.
It carried me,
that tiny poem,
as I walked through snow,
carried me as I wept,
carried me as I taught
and planned and paid bills.
It carried me as if
I were a Roman general
in a chariot, carried me
as if I were Venus on a wave,
carried me as if I were me,
a woman grateful to be carried
through a day by a poem,
its words not only
cradling this heart,
but becoming the heart itself.
Thank You, Gary Paulsen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged books, daughter, forest, Gary Paulsen, loss, reading on October 14, 2021| 12 Comments »
You are your most valuable asset. Don’t forget that. You are the best thing you have.
—from Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, (May 17, 1939-October 14, 2021)
How many children went down in that plane, Gary?
How many children fell out of the sky alone
and learned they could live
for months in the woods
with only a hatchet for help?
How many kids learned
that tough conditions were a bidding
to bring their best self?
My daughter was nine or ten
when she first drew your book from the shelf
and found herself stranded in the northern woods.
Then she went there on purpose again and again.
Now, three years later, she wanders a forest of loss,
and in so many ways she’s alone.
Gary, you gave her a story to believe in
in which young people survive, find their way home.
Your story’s a sharp tool my daughter can wield
to make sparks in these darkened days.
I thank you for teaching her
how she might rise from a crash,
how in these woods of sorrow,
though I would build her a fire if I could,
she is the best thing she has.
*In case you are unfamiliar with Gary Paulsen, you can read more here. As he says, “Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty.”
One Way to Do It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting go, opening, reading on June 14, 2021| Leave a Comment »
not reading the book
on letting go—
she opens her hand
In the Basement of the Old Stone Library
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, childhood, library, reading on November 17, 2020| 6 Comments »
Off the hot street and down
the narrow stairwell,
I entered the smell of books—
a musty scent of paper and ink.
How I loved entering the stacks,
shelves taller than I was.
Loved running my hands
along hardcover spines
wondering at the worlds inside.
I was allowed twelve thin books,
that meant twelve chances
to travel to realms where monkeys
stole hats and the Whangdoodle snoozed.
Twelve chapters in which I
was no longer an awkward girl
but a baker in an old village
or a mouse in an attic befriending a girl
who was something like me,
or at least like the girl I wished I could be,
a girl who was brave, a girl
who couldn’t help but stumble
every single time
into happily ever after.
The Girl Who Sat and Read in the Weeping Willow Tree
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, becoming, poem, poetry, reading, tree on January 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Even then she was becoming
a dreamer, a lover of bark,
a student of solitude. Even then
she noticed how there were places
and moods that words couldn’t touch—
even then she felt the joy in trying anyway.
Every Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged books, connection, poem, poetry, reading on February 3, 2019| 5 Comments »
and after the lights were out
and after my mother had kissed me goodnight
I would pull from under my pillow
the book, the flashlight, and for hours
in the quiet house, no matter how difficult
the day had been, no matter how low I felt,
for those hours I was so glad to be alive
in someone else’s story, and every time,
when I when I tugged long enough on its lines,
I could not help but notice
how each story was my story, too.