Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
After After the anger dries upand falls away like an old dried husk,it might be you feellike laughing—at yourself it turns out—and all that is now possiblewhispers to youlike wind in the meadow, and where before you sawa single pathyou now see thousands,and you wonderhow you never noticed it beforethe way every stepreceives you.
Meeting This Moment There was that night when the cats were frightenedbecause they saw a feral butterscotch cat outside the door—and for days they yowled and shrieked at each otherout of fear of what they didn’t understand,intimidated by what they didn’t know how to fight. So they fought each other.Displaced aggression, said the vet,and she encouraged us to give them space. Today, when the news is full of butterscotch catsthat come to my door, I understand the instinctto wail, to caterwaul. I understand the impulseto fight with someone, anyone, to raise my voice,to find my claws, to hiss and arch and attackin an effort to discharge this aggression that pumps in mechurns like a river in flood stage, filled with debris and mud. And that is when some inner voice,a voice so quiet it’s almost impossible to hear,suggests, “Singing is still an option.”Suggests, “Can you shine in this moment?”Suggests, “If you choose to speak only love,if you choose to give space,how might that change the only thingyou are able to change?”
One Way to Spend an Afternoon Together Our noisy outer world is but a reflection of the noise inside: our incessant need to be occupied, to be doing something. —Tenzin Palmo, Three Types of Laziness Sit with me. Let’s say nothing at all.There is nothing that must be said.The impulse to comment on weather,we’ll feel it rise and melt away.The weather will do what the weather does,will rain, will shine, will hail.Perhaps we will feel the needto comment on the light or to wonderwhen things will be different than they are nowor to worry about all the problemsthat we will never be able to fix.Urgency only lasts so long beforeit disappears. How did we everbelieve we belonged anywherebut here? Though the rainis gone, the scent of rain persists.If we are quiet long enough,it will say everything that must be said.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer co-hosts Emerging Form (a podcast on creative process), is the co-founder of Secret Agents of Change, is co-host of Stubborn Blessing (an online poetry reading series), and co-directs Telluride’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club. Her poetry has appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion and PBS News Hour, in Rattle.com and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and on river rocks. She has thirteen poetry collections, most recently Hush, winner of the Halcyon Prize for poems of human ecology, and Naked for Tea, a finalist for the Able Muse book award. She teaches poetry for mindfulness retreats, women’s retreats, scientists, The Embodiment Conference, and more. She’s been a storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival and Taos Storytelling Festival. Since 2006, she’s written a poem a day. You can find her daily poems on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. One-word mantra: Adjust.
Meeting This Moment There was that night when the cats were frightenedbecause they saw a feral butterscotch cat outside the door—and for days they yowled and shrieked at each otherout of fear of what they didn’t understand,intimidated by what they didn’t know how to fight. So they fought each other.Displaced aggression, said the vet,and she encouraged us to give them space. Today, when the news is full of butterscotch catsthat come to my door, I understand the instinctto wail, to caterwaul. I understand the impulseto fight with someone, anyone, to raise my voice,to find my claws, to hiss and arch and attackin an effort to discharge this aggression that pumps in mechurns like a river in flood stage, filled with debris and mud. And that is when some inner voice,a voice so quiet it’s almost impossible to hear,suggests, “Singing is still an option.”Suggests, “Can you shine in this moment?”Suggests, “If you choose to speak only love,if you choose to give space,how might that change the only thingyou are able to change?”
One Way to Spend an Afternoon Together Our noisy outer world is but a reflection of the noise inside: our incessant need to be occupied, to be doing something. —Tenzin Palmo, Three Types of Laziness Sit with me. Let’s say nothing at all.There is nothing that must be said.The impulse to comment on weather,we’ll feel it rise and melt away.The weather will do what the weather does,will rain, will shine, will hail.Perhaps we will feel the needto comment on the light or to wonderwhen things will be different than they are nowor to worry about all the problemsthat we will never be able to fix.Urgency only lasts so long beforeit disappears. How did we everbelieve we belonged anywherebut here? Though the rainis gone, the scent of rain persists.If we are quiet long enough,it will say everything that must be said.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer co-hosts Emerging Form (a podcast on creative process), is the co-founder of Secret Agents of Change, is co-host of Stubborn Blessing (an online poetry reading series), and co-directs Telluride’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club. Her poetry has appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion and PBS News Hour, in Rattle.com and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and on river rocks. She has thirteen poetry collections, most recently Hush, winner of the Halcyon Prize for poems of human ecology, and Naked for Tea, a finalist for the Able Muse book award. She teaches poetry for mindfulness retreats, women’s retreats, scientists, The Embodiment Conference, and more. She’s been a storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival and Taos Storytelling Festival. Since 2006, she’s written a poem a day. You can find her daily poems on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. One-word mantra: Adjust.