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.
Posts Tagged ‘transformation’
Though I Knew Love Before
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, community, grief, love, support, transformation on August 14, 2022| 17 Comments »
Catalysis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chemical reaction, chemistry, grief, love, sorrow, transformation on May 12, 2022| 6 Comments »
Any chemistry student
can tell you: a substance
that undergoes transformation
must first be torn apart.
I have been torn apart.
I have felt the breaking,
the rearranging,
and now the rebuilding
of my bonds. I marvel
at the brand new molecules—
how they transform
from despair to openness.
Though I look the same
and sound the same,
there is no mistaking
I am forever changed—
but not by sorrow, no.
Sorrow is the catalyst
that speeds it all up.
But it is love absorbed
that is breaking the bonds,
and love that evolves
as new bonds are made.
Some days I feel it,
I am less what I was and more
whatever it is that drives
the autumn, the spring.
Every day the chance
for love to find its way in.
And each time love helps me
to meet the unmeetable,
the reactant of self
becomes offering.
A Different Holding Pattern
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged holding, photosynthesis, plants, transformation on March 3, 2022| 14 Comments »
If I am to hold the world in my heart,
then let me hold it the way leaves hold sunshine,
trapping the energy not for the sake of holding it,
but to transform it into nourishment.
Though the process isn’t simple, it’s common.
All around the globe, in every season,
leaves hold and synthesize
whatever the day gives them.
On a day when the energy of the world
seems too much to hold,
let me bid my heart turn
like a leaf to the sun
and make sugar.
The way Rilke turned grief into sonnets.
The way Sibelius turned war into song.
Aging
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, transformation, wine on July 2, 2021| 4 Comments »
The wine in the glass
remembers the long days in darkness
how it couldn’t breathe,
how it lost its scent of grape
and became more grapefruit,
more green pepper, more grass.
How it lost its harsh taste,
lost its astringence, and became
rounder, more smooth, more
wine. I, too, am changing
in these long days.
I, too, am converting what I’ve known
into what I will be.
I, too, am becoming something
I almost don’t recognize—
heady with transformation,
yet tethered by memory
of what it was like
to feel trapped,
what it was like
to steep in that darkness,
to have to learn to trust
whatever came next.
One Forgiveness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, stone, transformation on May 24, 2021| 2 Comments »
how quickly
this basket of stones
becomes
a basket
of feathers
The Dust that Remembers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dust, remembering, transformation on March 2, 2021| 8 Comments »
The glass vase on the table
remembers when it was sand—
remembers its molecules
of silicon dioxide, remembers
what it was like to be singular grains
transported by wind. It remembers
the heat it took to melt,
to lose its crystalline structure.
How intense it is to transform.
It is no small thing to know clarity.
It is no small thing to lose
what we thought we knew of the self,
to submit to a process that changes us
forever. This woman sitting beside
the glass vase on the table
cannot remember when she was dust,
but she remembers those nights
of falling with no one to catch her.
She remembers those days
when she begged the world to open her.
She remembers losing what she thought
she knew and how it was replaced
with the most beautiful nothing—
even now she is changing in ways
she could never predict. Even now
she feels herself melting.
Bonfire in the Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, fire, new year, transformation on December 24, 2020| 6 Comments »
I throw in any tallies
I’ve been keeping,
the ones that record
who did what and when.
I throw in all the letters
I wrote in my head but didn’t send.
I throw in tickets I didn’t buy
to places I didn’t visit.
I throw in all those expectations
I had for myself and the world last year
and countless lists of things I thought I should do.
I love watching them ignite,
turn into embers, to ash.
I love the space they leave behind
where anything can happen.
A Little Pep Talk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged endings, heart, letting go, transformation on December 9, 2020| 2 Comments »
The swirling ash
doesn’t try
to be become
log again.
The flying leaves
don’t attempt
to return
to the tree.
The girl
can’t untwist
her genome
back into
separate strands.
The flour
in the bread
can’t return
to the sack,
can’t undo
the kneading
of hands.
In all things
lives a memory
of letting go
and the chance
to transform
into what
it can’t know.
What do you say
to that, heart?
Good self,
what do you say
to that?
Transformation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, prayer, rain, storm, transformation on July 17, 2020| 9 Comments »
You need a rainstorm.
—Paula Lepp
I need a rainstorm
on the inside, the kind
that relentlessly pours,
the kind that rearranges
everything, leaves nothing
untouched. I need a deluge
that drowns out any voices
that would offer easy answers.
I need a cloudburst to flood
everything I think I know,
that carries me until I, too, am current.
Have I gotten so dry inside,
so brittle and sure?
Give me a gulley washer,
the kind that scours
and remakes its path as it flows.
I want it, and yet
when I feel the first drops
I scramble for the umbrella,
as if it would do any good.
There it is, petrichor—
earthy fragrance of change.
The big rain will come when it comes.
There will be no stopping it then.
On the Edge of Transformation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cottonwood, transformation, tree on March 20, 2020| 6 Comments »
When it was a branch
on the cottonwood tree,
the driftwood never imagined
it could travel—
and now look at it, softened,
smoothed, riding the current.
Oh heart, what have you
yet to imagine?