In the middle of a Monday morning
I let my hands rest in my lap
and truly feel them rest, feel
them empty and open, these
hands that scrub and type
and wash and chop and rub
and dig and yank and knit,
these hands that twist off
and turn on and lift up and
wring out, I let them rest,
and because they have slowed,
a dream from last night lands
in my upturned palms, a dream
in which my father arrives
wanting to write a beautiful letter,
so I find for him thick creamy
paper and an elegant black
pen with dark black ink and
I clear for him a wide cherry desk,
wipe clean the dust and oh,
how wide his smile then.
It is only in the honey-slow
moments I am able to receive
these sweet tendrils from the dead—
only when I defy the momentum
of the human-made rush and
enter into the pace of the real
that I feel the gifts of their presence.
As now, midmorning, my hands
still as fallen leaves in the grass,
fall open to receive my father,
his thick hands poised above the page,
his laughter ringing through the dream
and into this golden, sun-flooded room.
Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Only When I Am Not Rushing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, dream, slow, writing on November 10, 2025| 8 Comments »
One Humbling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged humbling, insufficiency, language, writing on August 11, 2025| 6 Comments »
writing for four years
still not able to fully describe
that one moment
Letter to the Others in the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, darkness, fear, maturity, writing on January 7, 2025| 21 Comments »
I am writing not to send you light,
but to let you know you are not alone
in the darkness. I am here, too,
scribbling with no sight, no certainty
that the words on the page are legible,
no confidence you will receive this.
Still this impulse to reach out,
this longing to honor this deepening darkness,
though it is confusing, disorienting.
I find myself reminding myself
such darkness is natural, essential even,
and there is some comfort
in knowing this, in trusting I am part
of some great process, even though
it terrifies me. This is how the world
has been made and remade.
Of course we are no different
than stars. Perhaps you are not frightened.
But I am. Maybe this is why I reach out.
Because it takes so much courage
to trust the dark place, to attend to its demands,
to believe this is not the end, but a pause,
a stage between one world and another.
Please, don’t send me light either.
I don’t think I am ready yet, the pain still sharp,
not yet softened, not yet become wings,
though part of me longs to have already
arrived on the other side of transformation.
Perhaps you are reaching for me, too.
Perhaps you have already written
on this page, and because it is dark,
I can’t read what you’ve said.
Perhaps believing this makes me less alone.
And this is why I write.
Interlude
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, kissing, writing on November 28, 2023| 4 Comments »
Sometimes, waiting for the poem to come,
I lean in, eyes closed, lips parted,
edging wonder, unsure what comes next—
my heart a fluttering and tremblesome thing.
It’s like being seventeen again, wondering
if the boy beside me and I will kiss.
I love this flirty interlude when the poem
barely touches my lips with a brush
so light I wonder if I’m making it up—
and the pleasure center of the brain lights up
and soon I am breathless, dancing atop the labyrinth,
ready to give myself wholly to the kiss,
no longer able to follow the scripts I have known.
And the poem hovers above my lips
whispering, What truths are hiding inside you,
then plunders me until my eyes are open.
*
Well, friends, I can’t promise that when you sit down to write poems it will be like the poem above–but it just might be. Here are a host of fun online events coming up when you, too, might write and wonder what truths are hiding inside you?
“Turning Toward Life with a Pen in Your Hand”: Exploring Poetry of Presence II
TUESDAYS Nov. 28-Dec. 19
“What does it mean to be alive?” Consider this an invitation to join your voice to the big conversation about that question! In this four-week writing series, we’ll converse with poems from Poetry of Presence II: More Mindfulness Poems, an anthology of poems that “crack open the tough stuff and spill out the light.” Every class will consist of reading and unpacking poems, two sessions of original writing, optional sharing, and lots of talk about process. This is a chance to “practice mindfulness smack dab in the middle of our busy lives” through writing—partaking in wonder, embracing paradox, trusting life, and meeting our own lives as living poems. To register or for more information visit here.
Happy Birthday Rilke
Dec. 4
Join me for a birthday salon for Rainer Maria Rilke including of music, story and poetry. I’ll be with renowned Rilke translator Mark Burrows and cultural historian Kayleen Asbo as we trace how the music of Bach re-awakened his imagination after the trauma of World War I, resulting in the astonishing outpouring of poetry that became the Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies. A joyful exploration of the poems and poet that saved my life and the music that saved him. To register or for more information, visit here.
Sitting in the Midst of It All: A writing & self-care retreat
Dec. 7 & 8
Join Courage & Renewal facilitator Marcia Eames-Sheavly and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for a mini-writing retreat—a day and a half of self-care, wonder, quietude, gentleness, acceptance and connection. The wonderful Marcia will be guiding us in Parker Palmer’s Circle of Trust. For more information, visit here.
Stubborn Praise with James Crews
Dec. 18
Join Rosemerry & poetry friend and partner James Crews for an evening of conversing about poetry, change and transformation. This program was originally scheduled for October but had to be rescheduled. If you were previously signed up, you’re in! You should have received your registration info already. Even if you were not previously signed up, you can sign up now! For more information and to register, visit here.
Rosemerry Imagines Her Funeral
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, death, obituary, writing on March 31, 2022| 10 Comments »
I want it to be said
I was the kind of woman
who would weep in the concert hall,
undone by the beauty of song.
I want to be remembered
as a creature who loved
spring grass in her bare toes
and dirt in her hands
and the sun on her skin,
and I want everyone I love
to know for a fact
I chose them as my family.
I hope they will say
I loved the blank page
more than any word on it,
though I thrilled for words, too—
It was weird, they might say,
how she would sit there for hours,
days, years, wondering
about the next true thing,
letting the blank rub off on her.
She was so happy, eyes closed,
fingers hovering above the keyboard,
leaning into that moment
when anything is possible,
that edge where she learned
she had wings.
Dear 2020: Let’s write about it
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 2020, writing on May 7, 2021| Leave a Comment »
| Want to process the last year in writing? Here are three chances: Two small playshops through Wilkinson Public Library where we write and share, 12 people per class. OR a 40-minute Thoughtshop, hosted by SHYFT at Mile High, that will offer tons of poems and prompts. (Webinar format) Dear 2020: Writing to explore losses and blessings of the pandemic May 19, 6-8 MT OR May 20, 10 a.m.- noon The pandemic changed so much—how we greet each other, how we meet each other, how we work, how we play, how we move. There were huge losses—loved ones, careers, homes. And there were, for each of us, thousands of smaller losses—celebrations, vacations, events, goals, connections with family and friends, social rituals. For two hours, we’ll read and discuss and write poems (or not poems) that help us to name our griefs, meet them and honor how they have shaped us. We’ll explore, too, the silver linings and small blessings, letting poetry help us meet this moment and all that brought us here. Free. Led by poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Register here: https://telluridelibrary.org/events/ Re-Meeting the Self: A thoughtshop exploring losses and blessings of the pandemic May The pandemic changed so much—how we greet each other, how we meet each other, how we work, how we play, how we move. There were devastating losses of loved ones. Life-changing losses of careers, homes. And there were, for each of us, thousands of smaller losses—missed celebrations, vacations, events, goals, connections with family and friends and social rituals. In this 40-minute webinar, poet Rosemerry will read poems that help us to name our griefs, meet them and honor how they have shaped us. She will also share poems that explore silver linings and small blessings. With each poem, she’ll offer prompts for writing on your own in which we might let poetry help us meet this moment and all that brought us here. To register, https://shyftatmilehigh.punchpass.com/classes/8251189 |
Song of the Blank Page
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, blank, paper, woman, writing on February 11, 2021| 4 Comments »
What a woman really needs
is a blank sheet of paper,
which takes trees, of course,
softwood coniferous are best—
pines, firs, spruce, hemlock.
Their long fibers produce the strongest paper
able to hold the most difficult words.
And the tree needs sunlight, clean air, water.
And the tree must be cut using a chainsaw,
harvester, feller buncher. Must be moved
with a skidder or a forwarder.
Must be transported to the sawmill on a truck:
So many machines run by so many
human hands attached to human limbs
with human hearts and human hurts
and human hopes.
And of course, the woman
needs a pen for writing on the paper—
the ink no longer coming from soot
but from pigment including a solvent, a binder,
and a plethora of additives
such as chelating and drying agents—
a complex concoction suited to giving clarity
to complex thoughts.
She needs a room. Or a closet. A counter?
Or simply entry to an inner place
where there are no other voices
asking for help or offering help either.
A space where the predominant voice
she hears is her own—or perhaps,
more truly, the voice she is ripening into,
the voice that emerges when she lets the blank page
know more than she does, lets it lead her
on cursive paths that cross themselves often
but move her ever forward.
And then, with that clean sheet full of memories,
that pen with its synthesized balance,
that room with its impossible blessing,
she might at last meet what she really needs most,
that part of herself she will forever
continue to wonder about, that self
that reaches for her, that asks her to wrestle,
invites her to see what else she might find
in all that abundant blank.
Why I Urge You to Do What You’re Passionate About
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged passion, Rilke, usefulness, writing on November 24, 2020| 5 Comments »
And do you know that you’re actually going to make more of a difference by focusing on politics than on the culture you’re passionate about? You don’t know what you might help make happen. Our world is full of the result of unintended as well as intended consequences.
—Yo-Yo Ma, “Yo-Yo Ma and the Meaning of Life” in The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 20, 2020
When Rilke travelled through Russia
and studied Saint Francis
and fell in love with the married Salomé
and wrote poems for The Book of Hours,
he could not have known
that over a century later
a woman on another continent
would find herself wrestled by darkness
and find in his poems encouragement
to lean even deeper into darkness
until she could fall in love
with what she feared most.
He could not have known she would
tattoo his words into her memory
and scribe them into her blood
so whenever she walked or lay in the dark
she would have his words ever with her,
and they made her not only more brave
but more wildly alive than she’d been before.
And what if, as his parents had pushed,
Rilke had joined the military
and turned his back on poetry?
And what if he had not gotten himself expelled
from trade school so he could go on
to study literature and art?
What would have become of the woman
a hundred years later
had she not found his poem
and learned from him to love the dark?
Here’s a version of that poem that saved me, “You Darkness, That I Come From,” read by Meryl Streep.
Things You Didn’t Want to Play
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, loneliness, play, writing on October 2, 2020| 6 Comments »
Like Monopoly. Because you always ended up landing on Boardwalk
where the red hotel meant you owed two thousand dollars
and all you had were mortgaged railroads. Or like checkers,
because really, what was fun about moving small plastic disks
diagonally and hearing the other kid say, “King me.” And soccer?
Only because your mother made you because she wanted
to be coach. You did want to play school, but no one else did,
so you were the principal, the teacher, the student,
giving yourself homework, grading it yourself. Writing in red
in your best cursive at the top of the page, “See me.”
You didn’t want to play basketball, because no one else
ever chose you for their team. Even though you were tall.
And you were chosen last for volleyball, too. And t-ball.
And Red Rover. And dodge ball. Is it any wonder your favorite
way to play was to visit the junkyard and find treasure?
Or to walk along the lake to look for flowers and worms?
Is it any wonder you learned to love playing alone
in quiet rooms with an empty page and a pen?
There was no way then you could have known
that it would save you—no, you just thought
you were playing the only way you knew how,
walking through the only doors
you knew how to open yourself.
So I Picked Up My Pen Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, good enough, love, motivation, writing on September 21, 2020| 8 Comments »
with thanks to Rebecca Mullen
but what if I can’t do enough
I said, and love said
what if you don’t try?