The child inside me is spinning. She
loves the way her skirt rises
as she twirls. She knows nothing
of the Coriolis force
that acts on objects
in motion. She knows only
that she is in motion. She knows
her skirt rises higher and whirls more
the faster she goes, and she
likes it, the way it ripples
and flows, how it swirls around
her legs in a happy yellow
froth. She likes it so much
that she spins and spins
until she is dizzy and
stumbling, spins ’til she drops
in a laughing yellow heap on
the floor. She loves her new
discovery. She is eager and
silly, alive in her body. She jumps up
and spins again. And what of the woman
with graying hair, the woman
sitting quietly in the soft green
chair. She appears still, but
what no one can see—on
the inside she spins like
a dervish, a hypnotic whirling
born of grief that helps her meet
the illusion of separation, she
spins like the earth itself is spinning, spins
while her center stays still, and
what rises is peace, flaring
around her in long white waves
and she doesn’t lose her balance, and
the laughter of fifty years ago escapes
through her lips and
ripples, amazed, through
the silence.
Posts Tagged ‘Rumi’
While I Sit Quietly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged healing, inner child, Rumi, spinning, whirling on March 15, 2023| 7 Comments »
One While Reading Rumi
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, love, poem, poetry, Rumi on September 7, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Letter from The Universe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged einstein, interdependence, poem, poetry, question, Rumi, universe, why on April 2, 2019| 6 Comments »
The spam email was simple. Subject: Why?
Body: Answer me. And I thought of Einstein,
who wrote a brief letter to Miss Marion Block,
a woman who had written first to him,
overcome as she was by two world wars.
He wrote: The question “Why” in the human sphere
is easy to answer: to create satisfaction
for ourselves and for other people.
Almost 800 years earlier,
Rumi answered the same question, saying,
Oh soul, you worry too much.
I, too, like Miss Block, like the spammer,
like the soul, I, too, have stood beneath the stars
and asked Why, Why?
And this week, I received in the mail
a typed letter signed from The Universe,
saying, You know this, but may have forgotten:
you have been given a special task
to complete on Earth … the world needs you.
And the words from The Universe
leap from the page to form new constellations
inside me and I see so clearly
that I am one of many, many stars,
no longer capable of thinking I’m in this for myself,
certain that we shine for each other.
Two Invitations and a Surrender Inspired by Rumi’s Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, Rumi, spirituality on November 30, 2014| 1 Comment »
too much furniture
in here for dancing said God
handing me the match
*
my shine could get more
bang for the buck said the sun if
you’d act more moon-ish
*
a ship you have made
of my soul with you the mast,
the current, the sail
(from Rumi’s Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, XVIII)
Five Glimpses of the Possible: Haikulings inspired by Rumi’s Divan-e Shams-e Tabriz
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, Rumi, spirituality on November 16, 2014| 1 Comment »
robbing ninety banks
I’d still come up short to buy
this pearl love gives me
(Divan, x)
*
on this ladder each
rung its own destination—
it’s time, love, to climb
(Divan, xii)
*
rather to wear
this scratchy wool slip of love
than all the silks of pride
(Divan, xiii)
*
is that True Love
you’re sipping? quick, bartender,
make mine a triple
(Divan, xiii)
*
I put all I love
in a canoe, love sank it—
now everything is possible
(Divan, xiii)
Where Poetry Meets the Divine: Three Sufi Mystics and the State of Your Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hafiz, mystic poetry, poetry discussion, Rabia, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Rumi, sufi, Wilkinson Public Library on April 21, 2014| 1 Comment »
Let’s talk about something besides weather. Let’s talk about life, the miraculous body, the wonders of the heart, the agony of loss. And what is spirit? And what is love? And what are we here for, anyway?
That’s right. Let’s talk about all the things you’re yearning to talk about, but you’re not sure how to bring them up. Join local poet and scholar Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for this three-part series on the Sufi poets Hafiz, Rabia and Rumi.
The workshops will take place three consecutive Thursdays, May 1, 8 and 15 at 6 p.m. The workshops are free and open to everyone. The last workshop will feature Middle Eastern food and music and a celebration of the mystic poets and the Muslim Journeys series, of which this series is a part.
Wilkinson Public Library was one of just 125 libraries and humanities councils in the US to receive an American Library Association/National Endowment for the Humanities grant to present Muslim Journeys , a scholar-led reading and discussion program designed to foster opportunities for community conversations about the histories, faith and cultures of Muslims around the world and within the United States. WPL’s program began in January.
Again Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desire, failure, poem, poetry, prayer, Rumi, surrender on February 16, 2014| 1 Comment »
Your prayer should be, “Break the legs of what I want to happen. Humiliate my desire. Eat me like candy.
It’s spring and finally I have no will.”
— Mathnawi, III (4391 – 4472), “Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion,” by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
I was supposed to pray
for broken legs. Instead,
I prayed for a train to take
me anywhere but here.
Years went by. The train
never came. Rabbit brush
and salt brush pushed up between the rails.
So I thought perhaps I should
pray instead for a horse, but remembered
soon after that I am afraid of horses
and don’t really know how to ride.
So I prayed for car and felt
pretty clever that I remembered
to pray that it come with a full tank of gas.
But the only road out of here
is so muddy, so slippery, so steep,
so riddled with rocks
that any car would soon be stuck.
So I started to pray for strong, strong
legs to carry my weight and take me
far. And I began to walk and grew stronger,
and walked and felt fulfilled, and
the more I thought I was finally in control,
the less I thought I needed to pray. But nowhere
I went was a place that I wanted
to stay. I ran faster and faster
from here to here, out of breath
and dizzy from searching, feet blistered,
body weary, I found a new prayer:
Break the legs of what I want to happen.
Humiliate my desire. You know how it is.
I was still. And it worked for a while—
the sweet release of failure. And then, in the quiet
spring of surrender, the sound came
far off but clear, the whistle of the train
just coming through a tunnel
on its way to somewhere.
Rumi in Ridgway Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Rumi, video poem on October 28, 2013| 1 Comment »
What if, while wandering the park feeling sorry for yourself, you met a Sufi mystic on the merry go round? A video poem.
Rumi at the Ridgway Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, letting go, poem, poetry, Rumi on October 27, 2013| 4 Comments »
with a quote from “On Letting Go,” by Rumi, Ghazal (Ode) 323
Translation by Nader Khalili
They’re all brown now,
the leaves that last week
rained soft gold. Brown.
No, there is nothing soft
about the way they crunch
and crackle underneath my feet
as I weave inconsistent paths
around the park.
I find me wishing impossible things,
a longing for the way things were,
such soft gold leaves, the warmth, the light,
and feel some queer delight in wanting
the impossible. “Fall in love with the agony
of love,” says Rumi. “Not the ecstasy.”
He is circling on the merry go round,
his head flung back to the sky.
“Really,” I say.
“Yeah, really,” he says.
“Shit,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “I knew that’s what you’d say.”
Shit. I think to myself. He smiles.
The sky turns darker gray.
“But,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Rumi. “I knew you’d say that, too.”
Inside me, I notice something brown.
Something crackling toward dust.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he says.
And we say nothing for a long, long time.
The naked trees show no impatience.
The leaves show no remorse.
He offers me an empty swing.
I take it. I know this isn’t really flying.
But for a moment, I feel perhaps
what the leaves feel, the small thrill of falling,
the rush of what comes next as part of me
lets go, even as my hands grip
tighter on the chains.
Rumi Runs in the Imogene Pass Race
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged infinity, oneness, poem, poetry, race, Rumi on September 7, 2013| 4 Comments »
“Sir”, says the volunteer,
“you need to stay on the trail.”
But Rumi, running in blue Adidas
continues to find his way down
through the boulder field and cliffs.
“There is a moving palace that floats in the air,”
Rumi shouts back toward the road,
“with balconies and clear water
flowing through, infinity everywhere.”
The volunteer shouts after him.
“But sir, these cliffs aren’t safe!”
Rumi laughs. “The anger of police is willfulness.
Now see the invisible.”
The volunteer shouts,
“But the rules!”
And Rumi becomes
a field of open sunlight,
a field of open sunlight
in blue Adidas shoes.
He is a river moving.
The volunteer doesn’t
know what to do.
He turns to tell the woman
beside him about
the whole strange thing,
then thinks the better of it,
and pours another cup of Gatorade.
Story Circle Review of The Miracle Already Happening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Book Review, Liquid Light Press, poem, poetry, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Rumi, Story Circle, The Miracle Already Happening on June 30, 2013| 1 Comment »
Story Circle Review of The Miracle Already Happening
I imagine that Rumi would laugh at me for how delighted I was to read this review of my book “The Miracle Already Happening: Everyday Life with Rumi.” He would tease me, saying something like these words from Amma, “These flowers are not for you.”
Still, I was delighted to read this review. Thank you, Story Circle Book Reviews, for your kind words.
Spend a Day with Rumi and Rosemerry next Monday, July 1, in Telluride
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ah Haa School, poetry workshop, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Rumi, Telluride on June 24, 2013| 1 Comment »
July 1
Telluride, CO
Why Look Like a Dead Fish? A Day of Reading and Writing with Rumi
Ah Haa School, Stone Building, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“With passion pray. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?”
Jalaladin Rumi (1207-1273)
And with passion, we’ll read and converse and write. Rumi, a Sufi poet, theologian and teacher born in Persia, has been the best selling poet in America since the 1980s. His is a universal voice for cosmic, Divine love, not limited by religious beliefs, not embroiled in dogma. Into our modern, synthetic, technological world starved for real ecstasy, Rumi spills ecstasy. For six hours, we’ll talk about Rumi’s life, read his poems from multiple translators, and write our own poems in response to his words. All are welcome, regardless of poetic experience. As Rumi would say, “It’s rigged—everything in your favor. So there is nothing to worry about.” For more information, contact Jess Newens at 970-728-3886.
Winging It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flight, mothering, poem, Rumi, unlearning on May 23, 2012| 5 Comments »
What will our children do in the morning if they do not see us fly?
—Rumi, “The Way Wings Should,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Dear Rumi,
You tell me to fly, to cartwheel
around the sky, to soar, to reel,
to spiral in the wind. But
there is a nest and two hungry mouths
and two bodies not yet fully feathered.
It’s easy enough for you to advise
I should let my heart play,
as you say, “the way
wings should.” You
probably had someone else
at your nest to care for your
young while you unfurled
your wings and wheeled with Shams
and felt the joy of rising.
Perhaps I am too literal.
Perhaps you mean later in life.
Perhaps you mean bit by bit.
Perhaps you mean fly in this moment,
wherever I am. Perhaps you mean
I have put too much of a cage
on the word “should,”
have limited notions
of what flying looks like.
I thought I knew what wings
should do. But maybe this letting
go of what I thought I needed,
perhaps this, too, is flight.
The Teaching Says to Run Toward the Lion Swiftly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dissolution of the separate self, lion, poem, reluctance, Rumi, unity, yield on May 19, 2012| 5 Comments »
It takes immense faith to take one step toward the Lion in the presence of the Lion.
—Rumi
When you arrived
I did not see the lion
crouched behind you,
did not feel the warmth
riding on its breath,
did not see the teeth,
the nostrils flared,
the glorious golden mane.
I only saw your smile.
And would I have run
toward you the way I did
knowing what I now know,
that its jaw could open wide
enough to consume the world
whole. And now you’re gone—
just disappeared—
sweet bait that led me
to the lair. And I’m
down to flimsy things
I pile between me
and his yellow stare.
Is the storyline inevitable?
Did all paths lead to here?
So few steps between us.
I pretend to hide all the same.
The hollow wish to know
what happens next.
Devoured by a lion?
Have I gone insane?
Rosemerry, it was
a metaphor.
I listen as his long tongue
slowly grooms
his paws, his wild
oh, it’s beautiful, mane.
Nowhere to Go
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged openness, poems, poetry, protection, Rumi, vulnerability on April 26, 2012| 4 Comments »
with Rumi’s quotes from Undressing, trans. Coleman Barks.
I have just pulled out
my best armor and scrubbed
it with Kroger oven cleaner,
the only thing strong enough
in my cupboard to pull out
the metal’s intrinsic shine.
It glitters as I step
into the tall, silver legs,
the breast plate shimmers
in the afternoon sun,
and Rumi walks into the room
and pushes me with his hand.
I fall like a pin, like a tree, like a woman,
and clatter and clang echo
all around the room.
“Learn the alchemy true human beings know,”
Rumi says. “The moment you accept
what troubles you’ve been given,
the door will open.”
I struggle to stand and he tickles me
under the arms where the armor
exposes my skin.
“Joke with torment brought by the friend,”
he says. I stick out my tongue at him.
I clatter and clank and fail to stand.
This time he sits on the wooden floor beside me
and motions for me to be still.
The armor is uncomfortable,
and his fingers so soft as he cradles my face.
“Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
that serve to cover,” he says. “Take them off.”
“But I’m scared,” I tell him.
“I’m under attack.”
He looks at the empty room.
I want to tell him about
the woman who stabbed
at my back today, stabbed
from a hundred miles away. And
the man who would eat me alive.
But the space grows bigger all around us,
inside us, and the armor, it disappears.
It’s as if it the armor were never here.
Nothing left. Not a clang,
not a clunk, not a screw.
I am naked in the open room
with the sunlight reaching through.
And Rumi, he is gone.
No one here but quietude.
And the long, long sword.
And the butcher knife. And a note
in Persian script:
“Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade,”
Rumi has written, “And PS: That undressing
and the naked body underneath,
that is the sweetness that comes
after grief.” Goosebumps
rise on my naked arms, my belly, my chest.
A breeze goes over my cheek.
I do not reach for the robe
nearby, do not shrink
from the weaponry. I sit.
And doors I never knew were there
swing wide, wide open.
Dear Rumi,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, control, guesthouse, poem, poetry, Rumi, trust on February 26, 2012| 3 Comments »
After reading “The Guest House,” by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
The house, remember how it was swept
so clean last time you came around?
Not a book left on the shelves. The closets,
hangerless. The drawers, bare. Not even
a dust bunny under the bed. It was terrifying,
really, to inhabit all that emptiness. No cup,
not even a dirty one, to offer you. And you,
unphased, led me to the river to drink.
I am almost afraid to tell you I bought new cups.
And the shelves, well, there are lots of new books.
Many I have not yet opened. I just bought them
hoping to know, know something, something more,
something about nothing. That is ridiculous,
I know, and I can laugh at myself and still
I order more books.
There are rugs in the halls, and lamps, and I could even
offer you a stool. Is it so wrong, Rumi, to have brought
all the furniture in again? Shame, she came again
last week. She spit on my mirror and it won’t come off.
And Fear, he trampled mud all over the new white carpet.
And Anger, he tossed two of the new tea cups
on the floor where they shattered like hope.
And Hope, she picked up the pieces and made
a mosaic of wings.
I am learning, perhaps, to better greet
these visitors and laugh as you suggest.
Sometimes I even get excited to hear
the doorbell ring. And sometimes when I hear
footsteps at the door, I run to the closet,
curl myself into a ball, cover myself with old coats
and boots and shudder.
The Gift of Forgetting
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being available, brilliance, dissolution, gift, Rumi, stars, unknowing, unlearning on January 29, 2012| 3 Comments »
As salt dissolves in ocean,
I am swallowed up in you
beyond doubt or being sure.
Suddenly, here in my chest a star
came out so clear it drew all stars into it.
—Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks, Say I Am You
Dear Rumi,
It is easy to believe that a star could come out so clear in your chest,
a star so clear it could draw all stars into it, but in my chest? Here?
A star so clear? I don’t think so. No wonder I stumble
each time I try to memorize this line. I don’t think this is humility.
Is it fear? Fear of being responsible to my own light?
Here in my chest my own heart is straining against the cage
of my ribs, pushing hard all the oceans of blood that stay
in the shores of this skin—some interior ocean I am afraid
to go swimming in. “Not past the tip of the nose.” That is what
my teacher says, and time and time again I feel how true it is,
and now, your words like rocks in my mouth, here in my chest,
the same lesson again. I have been dreaming of stars,
dreamt that they were being poured into my mouth, not just the stars
but the spaces between them. Are these the stars of which you speak?
My god, here they are, already they have been given to me, and I am somehow unable to see them, unable to believe my own experience,
unable to unwrap the packaging and receive the gift. Here in my chest—
but these stars are not for me. Not something to make me brighter,
but a light that belongs to everyone. All of us dissolved
into the same ocean, all of us dissolved in the same night.
I can almost touch this, and then it is gone,
there is still too much of me here.
Upcoming Workshop with Rosemerry in Ridgway January 28
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poetry, ridgway, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Rumi, weehawken, writing workshop on January 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Why Look Like a Dead Fish?
A Day of Reading and Writing with Rumi
Saturday, January 28
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Weehawken Arts, Ridgway, CO
$85 member/$93 non-member
10 percent discount before January 20
“With passion pray. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?”
Jalaladin Rumi (1207-1273), trans. Daniel Ladinsky
And with passion, we’ll read and converse and write. Rumi, a Sufi poet, theologian and teacher born in Persia, has been the best selling poet in America since the 1980s. His is a universal voice for cosmic, Divine love, not limited by religious beliefs, not embroiled in dogma. Into our modern, synthetic, technological world starved for real ecstasy, Rumi spills ecstasy.
For six hours, we’ll talk about Rumi’s life, read his poems from multiple translators, and write our own poems in response to his words. All are welcome, regardless of poetic experience. As Rumi would say, “It’s rigged—everything in your favor. So there is nothing to worry about.”
Passionate about language and writing, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer earned her master’s degree in English Language and Linguistics, and for 10 years, she directed the Telluride Writers Guild. Her poems have been featured in O Magazine and on A Prairie Home Companion. Her books include Holding Three Things at Once, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and most recently The Miracle Already Happening: Everyday life with Rumi. For seventeen years, she’s taught in libraries, schools, businesses and universities. Clients have included Camp Coca Cola, The Aesthetic Education Institute of Colorado, Think 360, Business and Professional Women and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit her website, http://www.wordwoman.com for writing exercises and essays on the art of writing.
to register, call Weehawken, 318-0150
or visit weehawkenarts.org
The New Chapbook is Out!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, conversations with a mystic, find holiness in the everyday, imagination, poems, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Rumi, The Miracle Already Happening on December 28, 2011| 2 Comments »
The Miracle Already Happening: Everyday life with Rumi
Poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
50 pages
Liquid Light Press, 2011
$12
What would happen if a Sufi mystic showed up in your kitchen? Or at your son’s elementary school choir concert? Or in your garden? In this playful chapbook, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has poetic conversations with Rumi through his translations by Daniel Ladinsky and Coleman Barks and through her imagination. Whimsical and humble, these are poems of discovery, praise, and unlearning, invitations to find holiness in every moment, every place. Even Walmart.
What people are saying about “The Miracle Already Happening”:
A delightful collection of poems to savor and treasure … a deep oasis for all who seek to experience the sacred in every moment.
—Elizabeth H. Small, editor, Poems of Awakening
A rare treat: a rigorous conversation with the past made fresh by vulnerability, playfulness, humor and knockout surprise. There is so much integrity here, and discipline, and grace. And restraint, and cutting loose all at once. All this in poems that can be surrounded by a great quietness. The sensation can be like listening for birdsong, and having the bird silently and suddenly land on your shoulder. If you don’t fall over, you will shout or laugh.
—Peter Heller, author, Kook, and The Whale Warriors
One of the wonders of recent poetry has been the renewed popularity of the Sufi mystic, Rumi. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer confirms that great poet’s new life in remarkable poems of her own, conversations with a distant master that make us aware just how near he really is, how helpful in his teaching.
—David Mason, Colorado Poet Laureate, 2010-2014
How to Order:
To order a signed copy: email Rosemerry at wordwoman@mesa.net and include your mailing address and to whom you want your books signed. She will send you an invoice for the book plus shipping.
To order onine: http://liquidlightpress.com/rwt.htm
Dear Rumi,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letter, opening, Rumi on November 4, 2011| 3 Comments »
Sometimes I think if the night
were clear enough and the wind
was still, I could see
through all these walls I’ve built
to protect myself—from what?—
and know how to bring them down.
And then I could be open. But tonight
the sky could not be more clear
and there’s no hint of wind
and I still feel in my heart
all the places still clenched and tight.
“Not open, dear, but opening,”
I imagine you might say, reminding me
that open is a verb, not some destination
where I might arrive—
some magical place with a beach and umbrella,
some anywhere I’ve dreamt up
that isn’t wherever I am.
I can laugh kindly at myself when I’m not crying,
or when I’m not trying too hard.
I try too hard. My friend Barbara wrote me
and told me so. My other friend,
Joan, advised me that I would be challenging
wherever I go. They both said it
with so much love that I let their words
wholly in.
The prediction tomorrow
is snow, Rumi, and I will perhaps
be so enthralled or busy with it
that I will be drawn utterly out of my thoughts
of open and opening and how.
But there I go again, planting myself
into the future as if it will be easier
to be present then than it is right now.
Right now, there’s a knocking
in the kitchen. I don’t know what it is.
A heater? The fridge?
And my own heart is knocking
against my chest like a neighbor
who is coming to borrow a cup of sugar
in the middle of the night.
I don’t know, Rumi, why I am writing to you,
except that it feels as if something
has started in my soul, something
I don’t understand. Something more
about forgetting than remembering.
And as you once said to your own teacher Shams,
“You make my raggedness silky.”
I turn to the yes I feel
when I read your words and know
that I know nothing. When I read you
it feels as if the angels that I don’t quite believe in
have come, is that them doing all that knocking?
and those walls I mentioned, well,
I can laugh at them, too, when the doors
I didn’t even know were there
begin by themselves to open.