I hear the beat of his hand on the drum as he chants,
We are an old people, we are a new people, we are
the same people deeper than before. I have seen
his body explode with poetic energy, sparks leaping
from his fingers, his full voice booming inside my cells
like monsoon thunder in the mountains, and knowing
how big he can be, I feel his restraint as he sits in a circle
and listens, taming all that shakti into quiet attention
as the gourd is passed from person to person and stories
and songs and poems are shared and Art shows us how it’s done,
how together we weave the heart strands into a basket of communion,
and there no strand not welcome—thick ropes of sorrow, gold
threads of devotion, the spidery gray strands of loneliness,
red silk of holiness, scratchy gray of desolation, the deep forest
green of elation—and the circle is always and never the same,
and Art calls us in again and again to aliveness, to share
what matters, beating his drum in time with our hearts
saying welcome, welcome, welcome.
Posts Tagged ‘reading’
Fourteen Years Later I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mother, Narnia, reading, restaurant, story on November 4, 2025| 8 Comments »
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.
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.
Before I Could Read, There Was the Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, literacy, poem, poetry, reading, tree on November 1, 2018| 2 Comments »
The day is quiet and
the light is strong and I sit alone
in the V of the weeping willow
in a place where the sun can’t reach me
and no one can see me.
I pull off the bark in thick rough slabs,
and the day is drowsy and the light
is long and the bark feels rough
in my four-year-old hands,
but I flip it and find it is smooth
underneath where it touches the tree.
Yes, the bark is smooth, like my dress,
like me, and I move my fingers across
the soft side, surprised by the secret writings there—
meandering marks that slither and wriggle
in cursive spells, some language only
the tree can tell, that only I can read.
And the day is page and the light
is song and I am not at all alone,
perhaps there is writing inside me, too,
the bark thrilling in my hands.
Just One More Page
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, poem, poetry, reading on August 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Not the End
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, poem, poetry, reading, suicide on July 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »
And as the demon prison is opened,
it’s already half past ten, and my daughter
and I have already read an hour past her bedtime,
but the demon prison is open, and so
I promise just ten more minutes, but then,
at ten forty, our hero is clashing swords
with the demon who betrayed him
and so we read on to the demon’s demise.
Just yesterday I spoke with a friend
who told me she thought about killing herself.
We sat in the garden surrounded by cosmos
and overly abundant chard.
Life is not like the book where we know
there will be a happy ending,
which makes it harder
to want to turn the page.
Tonight, when we put down the book,
just as the next demon taunts
our hero, we turn off the lights
and feel the giddiness of the battle
pulsing through our bodies.
We giggle too loud and shudder
beyond our control. It is difficult
to find enough peace in ourselves
to welcome sleep.
How we long to turn just one more page,
just one more page.
May we always find reasons
to go on, believing that
something good is about to happen.
I may not believe in happy endings,
but I do believe in happiness,
the way it finds us when we least
expect it. Like the zinnia in my garden
that for months has looked shriveled and dead
since a spring frost, and just today,
after the big rains,
formed four green leaves.
My Nine-Year-Old Daughter Reads Emily Dickinson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, emily dickinson, literature, magic, mother, poem, poetry, reading on June 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Mom, she says, I don’t know what it was about that book,
but the pages were falling out and it smelled old
and I think it cast a spell on me.
And I recall the first time I read Emily,
an old cloth book with the text debossed,
how I ran my fingers over the words
and felt them as I read them:
“As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—”
Mom, she says, I didn’t even understand
a single word I read, but I couldn’t stop reading.
And now, I think that book is haunting me.
We are making her bed just before she sleeps,
and I tug on the covers to straighten them.
Yes, I say, her words are like spells.
I memorized that poem, though I was
too young to know of “courteous
and harrowing grace.” I knew only
that when I said the words, they gave
me such an openness, a wideness, a delight,
as if morning found its way into my chest,
and now, thirty years later, the early light
still touches me, still thralls.
The bed remade, she slips beneath
and I lay at her feet and for a time we read.
I want to talk more about Emily,
but the spell is her own and I don’t
want to trespass her magic,
the wonder she feels.
Perhaps someday she, too,
will read these lines,
“Our Summer made her light escape
into the beautiful.”
and know herself more beautiful
for having let them touch her.
Follow the Lead
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged America, pencil, poem, poetry, reading, unity on February 2, 2018| 5 Comments »
a
single
pencil
can
make
a
line
thirty-
five
miles
long,
and
I
wonder
how
many
miles
of
poems
per
pencil—
and
wouldn’t
it
be
amazing
to
have
poems
scrawled
all
across
America—
323.1
million
pencils
worth—
all
of
them
sharpened
not
to
point
at
each
other
but
to
write
the
words
that
must
be
said,
telling
our
stories
and
leading
us
in
looping
lines
ever
closer
to
each
other
One in the Eye of the Beholder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, books, poem, poetry, reading, story on January 25, 2018| 8 Comments »
reading the book again—
the dogeared pages the same,
the story in them, wholly changed
One Getting Lost
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, getting lost, poem, poetry, reading on November 5, 2017| 2 Comments »
So My Kids Pick It Out on Purpose Just to Watch
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, literacy, Love You Forever, mom, parenting, poem, poetry, reading on January 11, 2013| 3 Comments »
Despite the fact
I know what comes
next, despite the fact
I have turned
this page before,
despite the fact
that I tell myself
I will not cry, I will
not cry, despite
the past dragged
up into this moment
like a featherless bird,
despite the sunlight
stretching across
the morning floor,
despite the whisper
that says it’s creepy,
and despite the fact
that it’s not my name,
not my story, not
my song running
so soon out of notes,
I still cry every time I read
those words again,
as long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.
With No Exceptions, Not One Tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, gratitude, memory, non-dualism, page, reading, tanka on January 20, 2012| 1 Comment »
