I go walking up a backcountry road
and for ten minutes, a crow flies above
and before me, resting in trees along the way,
as if showing me the way to go.
Someone has made smiley faces out of pebbles
and left them on many large flat stones.
And the orange jeep that passes me
pulls a U turn and Trevor jumps out
and says, “I just wanted to hug you.”
If I knew only this hour, it would be easy
to believe the world is only good.
But I carry in me the certainty
that rupture is part of the whole.
I know cruelty lives in us all.
I know, too, the white truck slowed down
when it passed me, as if the driver said,
walker, I will make sure you feel safe.
I know when I turned not just out but in,
I felt such genuine love for the world.
That love was the strongest proof of all.
Posts Tagged ‘walking’
After Angela Tells Me She’s Looking for Proof of Good in the World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged good, inner beauty, walking on January 15, 2026| 8 Comments »
Almost Effortless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, contentment, grace, nature, peacefulness, seeing, tree, walking on January 2, 2026| 4 Comments »
A humble contentment.
Because blue green spruce
by the creek bed.
Because ancient red
of sandstone cliffs.
This almost forgettable moment
not forgotten.
This small seeing.
This ease in being, unearned.
Because the tips of the spruce
are more silver, softer.
Because afternoon mist
somehow mingles it all.
Because sometimes when I try,
I cannot feel the connection.
This moment when trust is.
This sinking of my foot
into slick, wet earth.
This small thing.
This everything.
Sleep Walker
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, waking, walking on August 27, 2025| 2 Comments »
Sometimes in my sleep
I walk with you. In the woods
or through the halls of a school
or once in a cave with turquoise pools.
We are almost always laughing.
Sometimes we play chase.
Only when I wake do I remember
you are gone. Is it any wonder
I like to linger in bed, sometimes
for hours, as if I could touch
the dream again, my eyes still closed,
my hands wide open.
Perception: A Sonnet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, perspective, sonnet, walking on February 11, 2025| 8 Comments »
I take a walk with my whirling thoughts
and the near-full moon and the dark,
and for a time, all that seemed large
in me is no less large, but it’s also a dot,
a blip when compared to the whole
of the night, as if the entirety of my life
and the life of my country and the life
of the earth could all fit in a fourteen-line poem
with two lines left blank. Because nothing I write
seems to touch how vast, how sublime it is—
the snow moon rising above red cliffs—
only space can convey how humbling it is, the night.
.
What You Couldn’t Have Seen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged appearance vs. reality, grief, survival, walking on January 29, 2025| 6 Comments »
I put on my shoes, friend,
the way I always do, and
opened the door and stepped
into the cold.
If you had seen me,
it would have looked
so normal. Like a woman
stepping out of her home.
Even the part where I talked
to the stars. Everybody
talks to stars sometimes,
right? What you couldn’t have seen
was how every step was an edge.
Sometimes, right there
outside the front door, I
slipped off the cliffs of the known.
It was years before
the ground was even again.
Though truly, sometimes
the cliffs are still there,
and I fall off again.
Isn’t it strange?
It looks just like I’m walking.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Poem & thank you
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, death anniversary, love, mother, walking on August 14, 2024| 26 Comments »
Dear Friends,
Three years ago today I wrote a letter saying that a terrible tragedy had happened to our family. Two weeks after, I shared this letter about the death of our son. Since that day, I have felt so much love, so much support, so much kindness, so much compassion from you. And today I can see so so clearly how you carried me through this most difficult time with your love, prayers, letters. Thank you. Thank you. I am so grateful for every one of you that has sent love, silence, words, thoughtfulness. It has meant so much to me. I thank you. I honor you. I wish you deep peace. Thank you. Thank you.
Love,
Rosemerry
*
On the Anniversary of Your Death
Your dad and I walked. Walked
for hours. Walked through deep woods.
Walked to tree line. Walked higher
than that to the place where larkspur
still bloom late summer, where
the paintbrush are still dusky pink
and creamy white, where marmots
sit atop tall rocks and squeak. We walked
and I could not not see the beauty.
Everywhere, the deep purple gentian
unfolding. Everywhere, the melted snow
flowing. Everywhere, beauty, so much beauty.
As I walked, I invited the past to join me.
Memories of tears, police and silence waded
with me through wildflowers up to my shoulders
and skinny-dipped beside purple penstemon
in the high alpine stream. Memories
of you as newborn, you as a boy, you
as a teen, they all joined me in eating
wild raspberries more tart than sweet.
Memories of how your sisters and father
and I have stayed alive hiked with me
beneath waterfalls and along sheer cliffs.
And so it is your death is always
here and not here. I saw myself
a gentian, opening, though frost
is coming soon. I saw myself a rivulet
that flows through it all. I saw myself
as mother, and marveled how you
are all ages at once to me now.
And when I cried, I kept walking.
Except when I stopped to cry.
All day, I put one foot in front of the other.
There is no wonder in this, and yet,
all day, the ache of it, the wonder.
This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged present, rain, summer, walking on August 2, 2024| 5 Comments »
Walking mid-summer
in the warm summer rain
there is summer in my
step and summer in my skin,
summer in the scent of soil
and summer in my blood
and there is nothing else
I’m searching for but to walk
in the rain in the summery world
with summer in each stride
and in each breath summer
and a summer breeze with its
warm summer touch and it’s
summer, mygod, I’m alive,
and it’s summer right now,
and I, no stranger to winter,
say yes, I say yes, yes to summer.
Ready for It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, music, play, Taylor Swift, walking on May 1, 2024| 7 Comments »
“Mom, what’s the title of this song,”
she asks me. I listen to the lyrics
for cues. Luckily, Taylor Swift starts to croon
in her mezzo voice, part velvet, part thorn,
“You’re on Your Own Kid.” And I shout
out the title. Vivian smirks,
knowing I was rescued by the song.
“Album?” she says. “Red?” I guess.
“Wrong,” she says. “Evermore?”
I guess. “Wrong.” “Midnights?” “Yes.”
She nods in mock exasperation
it took me so long.
She loves it when I get it wrong
in her endless quiz of popular songs.
She loves that she can teach me.
I love it, too, that she shares with me
these lyrics that grow her, shape her.
We walk along the river trail,
one white air pod in her ear,
one white air pod in mine
and the river braids by and the next song
begins to play. “Title?” she asks,
and I listen for clues until Taylor
demands in a gravelly rush
“Are You Ready for It?” And I look
at my daughter, just fifteen
and becoming so wholly herself.
As much as I want to stop
in this moment with her hand brushing mine
and the musky scent of river
and sunshine warm on our skin
and I think yeah, I’m ready for it,
though it brings me to tears, yes I am.
Why I Stay Up Late Walking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emotions, healing, walking on March 25, 2024| 12 Comments »
At night I walk. Because
it is easier then to not
be my story. Easier to be
more flesh and less brain.
Easier to be the one
who is gathered into
the field of darkness
by night’s great hands
and planted there.
Because sometimes
rain and sometimes wind
and sometimes stars
and always the world
so much larger than I,
so much vaster
than a small room
with a narrow doorway
and a tale relentlessly sad.
I walk not so much from,
but not so much to—
more that I walk through—
my ribs and lungs
becoming ladder rungs
that form a path
between earth and sky,
and I am more breath
than blame, more step than
shame, more now than why.
Walking Again in Rome, Georgia, at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged georgia, loss, love, not knowing, south, walking on June 20, 2023| 7 Comments »
When the night is warm
and the magnolia blossoms
twine sweetness into the humid dark
and the summer-loud frogs
fill the night with strange song,
I notice you are not here.
I notice the silence
that walks beside me.
There is comfort in it,
the space where your body
might have been.
Perhaps the connection
is something I’ve fashioned
out of longing for connection.
Does that make it any less real?
I speak to you, ask you questions.
I don’t expect answers.
I get none.
All around me, the fireflies
charge the world
with their beautiful,
fleeting light.
Redefining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, daughter, reverence, walking, wonder on March 5, 2023| 4 Comments »
Perhaps I thought awe required a symphony
or spinning galaxies or flagrant pink sunsets
or dropping to my knees, but today, it’s as simple
as walking beside my daughter on a quiet back road,
and her ears hurt and my legs are tired and spring
is barely a dream, but on this drab and windy afternoon
surrounded by bare branches and dirty old snow,
I feel it, reverence, how big it is, this love for her,
this wonder for the world, and I thrum
with the great gift of being human,
and the world is vaster, my god, it’s sublime.
Walking with KC on Christmas Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, conversation, family, heartache, paradox, sharing, walking on December 26, 2022| 4 Comments »
This, too, is Christmas, the quiet
walk on the quiet road in the quiet air.
The only carol here—
unending verses of river.
The only gifts we brought—
our attention, our trust.
This feast is for the heart.
There is a generosity to the sunshine
no candle could equal.
It’s a deep sweetness
to be wrapped in blue sky,
a deep sweetness
to share heartache, exhaustion—
something I would never wish for anyone,
and yet, this Christmas day,
the sharing of it,
such a beautiful present.
Spring in Fall
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, change, friendship, openness, walking on October 23, 2022| 4 Comments »
for Suzan
It feels right to walk
through naked trees
with our naked hearts
and our naked hands
and thrill in the sound
of wind in dry grass
and delight in how quickly
the clouds are shredded.
You could say, it’s just a day,
but perhaps a day such as this
spent practicing awe and openness
is what changes everything.
You step out of yourself.
Suddenly, anything could happen.
One Foreshadowing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged foreshadowing, forest, time, walking on September 10, 2022| 4 Comments »
still seeds in the ground
all those forests
we’ll someday walk through
Settling In
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, walking on March 2, 2022| 6 Comments »
The way old friends walk together—
that is how it is today with me and grief.
We stop and admire the cloudless sky,
the flight of a hawk. We keep walking.
There isn’t much to say, so we’re quiet.
No bluster. No drama. No striving.
Sometimes we catch a glimpse
of our shadows and wave.
It’s not uphill, we’re not out of breath.
I didn’t know walking with grief
could be like this.
There was a time, I remember, before.
Now, I can’t imagine not feeling close.
When the walk is done,
there’s no need to say goodbye.
I hold out my hand. We go on.
When in Rome
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged georgia, mother, parenting, son, time, walking on August 12, 2021| 1 Comment »
What a loss it would be
to not have born so I
would have missed a
Thursday night like this
in which my son and I
walk the dark streets
in Georgia and watch
the lightning transform
the sky into pink flares
and smell some sweet
unnamable flower and
talk about Dodge Chargers
and knees and roaches—
I swear it has all been
worth it, every second
of fifty-one years, for this
hour in which there
are no bells, no shoulds,
no other tugs except
to take the next step
down the centerline
together
while in the distance,
raps another clap
of thunder.
One Not Lost
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lost, mushroom hunting, walking on July 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »
charting our course
using mushroom rings—
earthbound constellations
Walking up the Fall Creek Road, 2021
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, meeting the self, walking on May 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I see my old self walking down.
She doesn’t have a mask in her pocket.
She doesn’t move to walk six feet away.
She leans in to hug me, as if it were the most natural,
ordinary thing to do. She looks offended
when I offer her an elbow.
She doesn’t yet know how a virus
will use genome origami to infect and replicate
inside host cells with terrible efficiency.
She doesn’t know the schools will close
and the stores will close and the streets will close
and the doors will close and it will all happen
in a week. She doesn’t know her daughter
will cry herself to sleep each night for weeks.
She doesn’t know her son will slip
into a darkness and rage she will try to carry.
How the days of her calendar will empty.
How pixilated her life will become.
How the hospital won’t let visitors in .
How she will miss her mother, her father, her friends.
How millions and millions will die.
And that’s just the health of it.
Part of me wants to tell her what’s coming.
I don’t.
Part of me wants to hug her back,
and I can’t quite explain why I do.
Because innocence.
Because she will be here soon.
Daily First Step
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moving, waking up, walking on February 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Every morning before I rise,
I crawl into my body, as if,
inside this grown woman
lives an infant still learning
what it is to be in a body,
what it is to move forward,
certain there is a world
I want to wobble my way through,
run through, even dance,
if only I can first find a way
to stand in it.