At last the river is covered in ice,
a vast white sheet from bank
to bank. A woman, or a rabbit,
could use to cross what usually
feels uncrossable. I think
of William Stafford standing beside
the frozen Methow river, asking a question.
The silent river was his answer.
Later today I will put on my old navy coat
and my big old rubber boots and walk
to the shore with my satchel of questions,
the ones that writhe and twist in me,
the ones that make me tremble.
Perhaps, you, too, will bring your questions
to a shore where winter has hidden the song.
If you have no river, any quiet space will do.
We can stand there together
at the edge of no separation
to see which questions spill out.
No matter where we stand,
we can listen to the silence
that crosses all boundaries, listen,
together, and wade into the current
beneath all listening.
Posts Tagged ‘uncertainty’
What Joins Us
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, question, river, stafford, uncertainty on February 3, 2026| 2 Comments »
The Channeling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged divinity, fear, kindness, rising, uncertainty on January 20, 2026| 5 Comments »
We might as well be divine.
—Kate Horowitz, “i tell the ghost of carrie fisher the world is ending”
We might as well be divine.
As masked agents arrive
with guns, curses
and brutal disrespect,
we might as well be divine.
We might as well sing at the edge
of collapse, bring forth the kind
of harmony that calls goosebumps
to arms and hot tears to eyes.
As we march, as we gather,
as we fight for each other,
we might as well be divine.
As rivers shrink and sinkholes
appear and we face water
bankruptcy worldwide,
we might as well share
what is not ours to own.
And be kind to each other.
And praise what good we find.
This is it. It’s like this. Nothing
but now. What we bring,
who we are, this is all.
As tears fall fast and voices rise,
as fear grows thick and viscous,
we might as well be channels for grace,
we might as well be divine.
Not Alone
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, uncertainty, whirlpool on October 12, 2025| 8 Comments »
Through the throng
and past the chatter
we slipped into a small
blue sitting room
and there at the edge
of the chaos, she told me
what the doctor said.
The world became
whirlpool, no shore
in sight, and
we met in a perfect
stillness, holding
to each other, our
friendship like driftwood,
no way to steer, but
for that moment, we
floated, floated!
no small thing as
all around us
uncertainty crested
and surged and
crashed and swirled.
Ars Poetica: A Cinepoem on Uncertainty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Anaissa Ruiz, Christie Aschwanden, cinepoem, uncertainty on March 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »
What is it like to meet a blank page? Anything at all can happen. It’s part of why I love writing poems. Ars poetica is a Latin term referring to poems written about writing poems (I know, pretty meta), and in this particular expression of ars poetica, I explore what it’s like to meet uncertainty when you first sit down to create and the page is still blank. The poem was featured in Uncertain, a limited-run podcast for Scientific American, made by my beloved friend, science writer Christie Aschwanden. Then, the amazing Anaissa Ruiz ( @shethescientist ) transformed it into this creative video … so sweet all the dimensions of creative wonderment that led up to these 51 seconds! You can hear what went into the making of Christie’s amazing podcast here on episode 109 of Emerging Form. As she says, “The magic really happens when you are open to things,” she says, and openness is only possible when we engage in, you guessed it, uncertainty.
At the Edge of a Wild Sea
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boat, love, oar, uncertainty, unknown on December 8, 2022| 2 Comments »
I step into the boat.
You offer me an oar.
Thank you, but sweetheart,
what I really want
is to be in the boat
with no oars
and you.
Getting to I Don’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged certainty, prayer, uncertainty on September 20, 2022| 9 Comments »
Sometimes, too certain I know what love is,
I miss love.
It’s like thinking water is waves,
not seeing water is also the depths of ocean,
the muscle of river, the body, the air,
ice, snow, fog, clouds, mist.
Sometimes, longing to hear certain words,
I neglect to hear the words that are spoken.
Or craving a certain touch, I disregard
all other touch, and my skin believes it is starving.
There is beauty beyond beauty, love beyond love,
opening beyond opening, an apple inside apple.
Let my prayer be I don’t know.
Let me find the door inside the door,
the glimmer inside the glimmer,
the human inside this woman.
The god inside of god.
Trying to Get It Right
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged step, tightrope, uncertainty on May 29, 2021| Leave a Comment »
after Knowing Now You’ll Never Be a Clown by Jack Ridl
I’ll never be a tight rope walker
balancing above the canyon—
no net beneath me, just angry rapids,
no strap tethering me to the tight rope
to catch me should I fall.
But could I be a tightrope walker,
I would know the art of one step at a time,
would know how to tune out everything
except the step that comes next.
Or is it that I would know
how to tune in to everything
so I might better meet the next step?
If I were a tightrope walker,
I would trust myself
know every muscle intimately,
would have faith in my reflexes,
faith in how I respond to wind,
to challenge, to fear.
Instead of all this wondering
about what should come next.
Instead of all this worry about
how to take a step.
To Say I Don’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged sunrise, uncertainty on May 4, 2021| Leave a Comment »
It’s like moving west around the earth so I might stay in perpetual sunrise— moving to stay in that moment when the day is blushing with potential. But sometimes when I am very still, I notice the sunrise within. And I wake and I wake, and I wake and by doing nothing, begin again. |
The Lover of Uncertainty Confesses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, certainty, uncertainty on April 19, 2021| 2 Comments »
Certainty is a frigatebird,
able to soar on the wind for weeks,
its nest a distant thing.
Is it wrong to say I admire it,
sleek and raven feathered,
how it dives from the sky
with exquisite precision,
how it steals what it wants
with no regard for what’s fair.
I have wanted to be that certain,
wanted to take, wanted to believe
my hunger is all that matters.
Is it wrong to notice these thoughts,
to give voice to their midnight wings?
I say I trust what I don’t know.
Meanwhile, I flirt with certainty.
It whispers to me,
I’m the other truest thing.
Code
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged binary, code, love, math, uncertainty on July 18, 2020| 2 Comments »
inspired by Wayne Muller
I do not love you in 0s and 1s,
some straightforward proposition—
our love, my dear, is gray, is .772,
refuses to be simplified, reduced.
There is maybe in us. And perhaps.
Wouldn’t it be easier if love were like math—
a logical answer we could arrive at,
with binary digits to map it all out.
Instead, a word, a tone, a should
makes what is certain slip off its string
and the bits and values keep changing.
Somewhere between the 0 and 1
is a meadow where we might watch the moon,
a garden where outlandish fruits still grow,
a mountain we will never stop climbing.
Things that Bloom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bloom, blossoming, uncertainty on April 20, 2020| 2 Comments »
I’m thinking of silence, how when it opens,
it changes the room with its fragrance.
How frost can make a garden
of a window overnight.
Old friendship—sometimes
even when we forget to water it,
persists like mint.
Fear, of course, is knapweed-ish,
tap-rooted, invasive. Almost impossible
to eradicate its petals of panic,
petals of dread.
Sometimes a name can bloom
on the tongue when the syllables
stem from someone we love.
And when we’re very still, the moment itself
seems to bloom, like a peony
revealing layer after tender layer,
charging the air with sweetness.
Now flower. Here flower.
The moon, that giant cream perennial,
reminds us nightly how we, too,
are called to grow our light
toward the dark.
And uncertainty, it comes to us
in giant bouquets, each bloom a question
that doesn’t want to be answered,
it wants only for us to hold it in our arms
like the gift it is.
Tonight I Pray for All the Doctors, Nurses, Health Care Workers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, courage, doctor, uncertainty on March 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »
And tonight I think
of the seventeen Italian doctors,
dead. And the hundreds
of thousands of people
whose test results were positive.
And all the doctors, nurses,
health care workers—
some right here in our town.
I think of them eating breakfast,
reading the same discouraging news,
then kissing their loved ones,
putting on their shoes,
and walking out the door,
though resolution’s as elusive
as last month’s peace—
the peace we didn’t
even know we had.
The Vendor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged becoming, map, poem, poetry, uncertainty on January 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »
And if there were a map
for the path of my own becoming,
I wouldn’t buy it.
I tried. I marched up to the vendor
of maps, took out my coin,
and held it out for the exchange,
but was startled by an inner revolt—
not an angry crowd but a quiet, insistent no.
I put the coin back in my pocket
and walked away, wildly aware
I had no idea what step came next.
The Gift of Uncertainty: Explorations in Dreams and Poems
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corinne Platt, dream workshop, poetry workshop, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, uncertainty on September 27, 2018| 2 Comments »
Placerville, CO, Sunday, October 28th 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., $100
How often do you wake up from a dream and wonder, “What was that?”
What if you discovered that your subconscious has the answers you are seeking? Each night, through dreams we are offered pieces of ourselves that we might never come to know. For many of us, we have learned to not just dismiss our dreams but our deeper emotional and spiritual worlds as well.
In this workshop, we will explore the landscape of dreams and write poems that float between dream and reality, the irrational and the authentic, certainty and uncertainty. Through dreams and poetry, we will open up to the uncertainty in each of our lives—the continual, miraculous unfolding of not knowing.
No previous experience with dream work or poetry necessary. Led by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Corinne Platt.
To register, contact Rosemerry, 970-729-1838 or wordwoman@rosemerry.com
or
Corinne, 970- 596-5221 or corinneplatt@earthlink.net
Without A Map
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting go, poem, poetry, sea, ship, uncertainty on September 7, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Silly me, I thought the boat was empty.
Thought there was no one else here to paddle
or steer. Thought I was alone and too small
to reach the rudder, too weak to lift
the great oars, somehow not seeing
the sea itself as captain, the sea itself as crew,
its waves carrying me places I never knew I needed
to go until, on that strange new shore, I found
myself exactly where I needed to be,
shipwrecked and wildly alive.
What the Path Thinks
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged path, poem, poetry, uncertainty on May 17, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Tonight the path
is tired of being
a path, would rather
be a leaf. Enough
of trodding. Enough
of this one foot
in front of the other.
Rather to unfurl
and serve and let go
and get lost. Really,
how hard could it be?
Something about
“path” suggests
certainty. The path
feels like a fraud.
It’s exhausted
with arrivals. It wants
to fall off. It wants
to cartwheel across the field
like last year’s leaves
in spring wind.
It wants to have
no idea at all
where it is going.
Living with Uncertainty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poetry classes, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, uncertainty on April 23, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Hello friends,
I hope you can join me in a four-week poetry discussion class on living with uncertainty.
Week 1: Accepting Uncertainty as a Part of Life
Week 2: How Inviting the Unknown Helps us Live More Richly
Week 3: How we Find Ourselves by Getting Lost
Week 4: The Generative Power of Not Knowing
The class is offered through Weehawken Arts in Ridgway, Colorado, 12-2 p.m. on Wednesdays. To read more or sign up, please click https://www.weehawkenarts.org/classes/22-classes/creative-arts/153-living-with-uncertainty-a-poetry-discussion-series-with-rosemerry-wahtola-trommer
Why I Keep My Hands in My Lap
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, silence, uncertainty on February 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Between us a silence
so fragile that half of me
fears it will shatter
and cut us, half of me fears
it will erupt and we’ll burn,
and half of me thinks
if I stay still enough,
something beautiful
might emerge.
Learning to Wander Those Paths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, uncertainty on February 10, 2017| 1 Comment »
between the question
and the answer is the garden
where the rose is still open—
soft-petalled and fragrant—
regardless of what comes next