for P
All day I imagine my love
is a great ocean that lifts you
on a warm and gentle tide
so all you need to do today
is float. Float and let yourself
be carried. Float and know
that in this hour nothing
need be done. Perhaps
if you are still today, even
for a moment, you can feel
the way these distant waves
are near as your own sweet breath.
The weight of all that scares you
doesn’t change. I know. I imagine
I lift that, too. Lift it all until
you are certain no matter
how much things change,
you are not alone.
Posts Tagged ‘support’
Because It’s Hard to Not Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, love, ocean, support on July 20, 2024| 8 Comments »
Balancing Act
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, family, father, memory, support on October 29, 2023| 6 Comments »
When I was a girl, my father
would lie on his back, palms up.
I’d step barefoot into his hands
and slowly, slowly, he’d lift me.
I’d balance above him, floating
like an angel, like a circus star,
like a little girl who trusts her dad
to support her. Fifty years later,
I still feel his hands on my soles—
even this moment, I could rise.
An Incantation for My Little Brother’s Pillow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, family, love, pillow, sister, support on September 19, 2023| 4 Comments »
(on the night before a difficult day)
Because I can’t be there now to hold him,
I will my brother’s pillow to be more soft,
will it to offer him the deep magic
no pillow actually owns—will it
to bring him dreams in which
the light is gold and the air
smells of dark violets and
white trillium like it did
when we were kids.
I want his dreams
to feel so real, so
full of love he
wakes with
a smile as
inevitable
as today.
To Everyone Who Beamed Me Love, But Felt Apologetic for Not Writing or Calling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, love, silence, spaciousness, support on January 30, 2023| 22 Comments »
Now I know there is a sacred cathedral
made of unspoken love,
a most beautiful cathedral
built of generous silence,
a healing sanctuary created
by open hearts that reach out wordlessly.
I have been living in this cathedral
that your love built, and I am changed.
Now I trust loving silence
is a generous response
to another person’s pain.
When I am alone, I am not alone.
When you, in your own home,
open your hands as if in prayer,
I feel your hands holding me.
Your compassion touches me
the way light slips in through stained glass
to touch a face.
The pure hush of your hope
arrives in my heart like plainsong—
more breath than voice, as holy as any syllable.
Thank you for the ways your thoughtful silence
has lit in me thousands of candles
as I meet the darkest hours.
Now, I can’t unknow this: I trust love,
how it flourishes in the vast spaces
across miles, across time.
Such sweet, intense healing perfume—
like lilies on an altar—
the scent of your loving silence
as it opens me.
Unfolding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, growth, infinity, support, unfolding, universe on August 18, 2022| 7 Comments »
In a vision, I saw the self
as white flower—
a many-petalled ranunculus—
a flower that opened and opened
and infinitely opened, reaching
beyond borders, beyond atmosphere,
beyond our beautiful spiral of galaxy,
its petals unfolding and unfolding,
a timeless, unending unfolding.
It comforts me to know
there’s no edge to the universe,
no way to fall off, no way
to accidentally go beyond.
There was a moment when
the green stem snapped and I worried
the blossom had become too big.
Then I felt it, how completely
the great bloom was held by the world,
and in that moment, I trusted that holding.
The flower kept growing.
Now, back in my body,
I’m still opening into that trust.
Though I Knew Love Before
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, community, grief, love, support, transformation on August 14, 2022| 17 Comments »
Exactly a year ago I posted a message instead of a poem, explaining I needed a time away. Two weeks later I explained why. It was almost two months later I posted my son Finn’s obituary. In the last year, I have been so humbled by the love and support and kindness of people. So many of you reached out to me in some way, and whether it was with a letter, an email, a gift, a call, a prayer, your thoughts, a song, or your energetic presence, I am grateful. It has mattered. You, with your love and goodness, you have not only buoyed me, you have changed me. I don’t know how anyone would ever survive such a loss without such an outpouring. I thank you, every one of you, I thank you, I thank you. I am sobbing now thinking of it–all the love. This poem tries to touch it, but, well, it’s just the surface. I am swirling gratefulness around all of you. I honor your losses that have made you who you are, that have made you so tender and generous toward others.
With abiding awe,
Rosemerry
Though I Knew Love Before
Not until my world dissolved
in an instant did I begin to understand
the communion of hearts.
Not until I could not put one minute
in front of the next did I begin
to understand infinite devotion.
Not until I lost my own flesh did I begin
to understand the muscle of spirit.
I will never love the loss, never,
but I love the life that rushes in after.
I love the intimacy
of those who have lost—
how we find each other and offer
our open embrace, our unwalled affection,
our wildest wishes for peace.
Not until I was consumed
by the great wave of love
did I know not to fear
the great wave of love.
Only then did I learn the beauty
of ceding the self to something much greater.
Only then did I learn how love
not only carries us,
it transforms who we are forever.
To Hold You, To Be Held By You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, sunlight, support on April 15, 2020| 8 Comments »
I want to give you the same welcome
that a meadow gives to sunlight. I want
to be that open space for you where you
can show up completely, can be brilliant,
can play. I want to be the container
that holds you, receives you, but never limits you.
I know these days are difficult.
I know it’s not easy to endlessly shine.
But here in this meadow, you are necessary.
Without you, things wither. And when
you are most yourself, your warmest
most generous self, do you hear
how the birds sing in response? Do you see
how green, how alive the world becomes?
Spending the Day at the Volleyball Tournament
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged girls, love, sports, support, volleyball, women on February 10, 2020| 2 Comments »
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
—Annie Dillard
I want to spend my life
cheering for young girls as they learn
what they are capable of, learn
to trust themselves and each other,
learn to become a team. I want
to spend my life looking for new ways
to say, “I am thrilled with who
you are becoming.” I want to support
other women’s daughters, all of them,
some of them with my own hands.
It’s so easy, really. A glass of water,
a hug, a word, a shoulder, a nod.
And if days are our currency, let me
spend them giving as much love
as possible, though it sounds
like a cheer, though it feels like a pat
on the back, though it looks like
a bagel, a headband, a double thumbs up.
Every Thursday at 2 for Five Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, love, poem, poetry, student, support on September 12, 2019| 2 Comments »
for Phyllis
I remember the day she chose me.
It was fall. I didn’t know then
I would come to love her, didn’t know
how trust would grow, like catnip, like oregano,
more robust, more wild every year.
I didn’t know how I’d been waiting to be chosen,
that she would help me find the wings I’d never felt,
never seen. That she would dare me to fly.
That she would be the wind.
The Dream Speaks
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, nightmare, poem, poetry, support on February 28, 2019| 7 Comments »
Some dreams are meant to wake us up.
Like the dream when the man approaches your car
and you roll down your window to ask him what he needs
and he speaks in words you don’t understand.
What? You say to him. What are you trying to tell me?
And he pulls out a chainsaw and thrusts it through the open window
and instead of recoiling, you try harder to hear
what he’s trying to say. What are you saying?
you ask him, still wanting to make sense of the man,
believing he has something important to teach you.
He is here to teach you some people are not safe.
And why is it your survival instinct is so slow to kick in?
At last you thrust the car into reverse
and swerve down the narrow road before launching
into the air and soaring, soaring away from the man,
somehow unsurprised when the car lands in a canopy
of trees. And you are unhurt in the arms of oaks.
When you wake, as you do, each time you try to return to sleep,
there’s the man again, his chainsaw reaching for you,
the evil snarl on his lips. Wake up, says the dream.
Not everyone can be trusted. Why is it so hard
to wake you up? How can the world support you
if you choose to stay with what hurts you,
if you don’t let yourself be launched?
Holding It All Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Montaigne, philosophy, poem, poetry, support on October 4, 2018| 3 Comments »
And when Montaigne turned thirty-eight,
he began to paint inscriptions on the roof beams
in his library. Words of Socrates.
Euripedes. Sophocles. Horace. Ecclesiastes.
Theognis. Epictetus. Lucretius. As if to keep
himself looking up. As if to remember
where the world has been. As if to know
himself as part of this glorious conversation.
And who have I painted on the roof beams
of my heart? Rumi. Neruda. Mira. Rilke.
Szymborska. Hopkins. Ahkmatova. Bass.
Every day, I climb into that tower and trace
their words with my thoughts, wander
their paths, let them hold my hand. Sometimes
they take me by the face, the way a mother
or a lover would, and hold me there as if to say,
Now listen. I mean this. I mean you.
Sometimes they stand passive, and
force me to find my own way in.
These are beams that never will burn,
the kind that hold up the sky.
Montaigne inscribed Horace, who
tells us: shelter where the storm drives you.
And wherever the storm, these beams
are there. Meanwhile, the thunder, the crackle
of lightning, the scent of the coming rain.
Reconciliation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, poem, poetry, support, time on July 6, 2018| 5 Comments »
We are all walking each other home.
—Ram Dass
There was that moment before
I read the letter, when you
were still invincible, that moment
when just seeing your name
made me think of sitting at your table
drinking wine, eating fresh tomato soup,
and my heart rose up like a good little dog
and begged me to read the news.
And then there was the moment
when I read the news. And read it again.
And let my eyes unfocus on the words
as I felt their terrible weight
settle in my chest, on my cheeks.
How soon the mind leans toward the worst.
It is hard to reconcile the two moments
together, side by side as they were,
the one so exuberant, the other
so grim. I try to imagine them
holding hands as if to steady the other.
As if they need somehow to be close,
fear and hope. If you feel a hand
slip into yours and no one is there,
perhaps it is mine, reaching
toward you through a letter
I will always be writing, the letter
of how beautiful it is to be alive
in this world so we can
shoulder together what frightens us most.
How beautiful it is to be alive
so that even in our most lumbered days
we might meet each other, hands open,
and steady the other, walking home.
One in the Middle of the Ocean
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, love, parenting, poem, poetry, support on January 22, 2018| 8 Comments »
wanting to be your lifeboat
when what you really need
is someone to let you swim
and if you live nearby, you may want to consider this public speaking class I will be teaching for the next six Thursdays through Ah Haa … http://www.ahhaa.org/calendarize/public-speaking-rosemerry-wahtola-trommer/
On a Difficult Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, hope, poem, poetry, prayer, support on January 17, 2018| 13 Comments »
Because I don’t know how to pray,
I do what I know to do,
which is to sit very quietly
and let myself feel. To hold you
without holding you.
To imagine your fear
and breathe into it.
To feel my own fear
and walk the edges of its cliffs.
To lean on hope with its flimsy
net and feel how little it takes
to catch us, to save us.
Only Four Inches Thick
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ice skating, poem, poetry, support on December 30, 2017| 2 Comments »
How does it do it,
the skin of ice—
it holds our weight
we who skate
in circles around
the frozen lake.
Though it groans
and cracks,
it holds us,
this solid ground
made of what
is not always solid.
Is it too much
to hope that we, too,
might sometimes
be able to hold
the weight of others
with such clarity,
such polished grace?
Our skates carve
unreadable cursive
into the surface.
Below us, clouds blossom
in the ice—bouquets
for days such as these
when everything
seems possible,
even improbable strength,
even falling through.
One Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, illness, poem, poetry, support on July 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »
What We Do When We Can Do Nothing Else
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, hardship, love, poem, poetry, sadness, support, trouble on October 26, 2012| 2 Comments »
What We Do When We Can Do Nothing Else
When trouble comes
with its long gray dress
and its hungry eyes
and its basket of woe,
when trouble comes
with its insomnia
and note past due
that you know you can never pay,
when trouble comes
with its refusal to let you
be bailed out this time
no matter how crisp
the hundreds are,
I do not want to be
the one who lies to you
and says it will all be okay.
I don’t want to play
the teacher and talk
about how the world
erodes us until we shine.
I want to be the one
who holds your hand,
though, even if it is
from many hundreds
of miles away, and
even if you do not hear me
say it, I will be thinking,
miracles happen,
and you are one.
I will write you a poem
made of doors, all
of them open,
even the one
that trouble walks in,
even the one
that trouble walks out.