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January 31, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
I walk to the river and see how the banks
have changed since even two days ago.
Now water flows through the bright red willows
instead of staying in the main channel.
I remember how it used to run right here
where I am standing until a mighty flash
flood altered its course and there was not
a damn thing anyone could have done to stop it.
 
There is, even now, a rising flood of love.
It will move anything that tries to impede it.
When I can’t hear the flood of love,
that’s when I know it is up to me to share love
so someone else hears the currents I’m listening for.
Together we make unstoppable waves—how they roar.

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When They Asked Me, “What Is Your Current Hyperfixation”

January 30, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
I could have said potato chips. Always true. Plain ones. No flavors. Potato. Oil. Salt. I could have said black licorice from Finland, also always true. Or long flowy pants with no front pockets. That’s new. Tending my eight aloe babies still recovering from their transplant. Counting orchid buds about to bloom. How many grams of protein in a serving of anything. The insane softness of my daughter’s inner arm. How baby swifts can fly ten months without stopping. Imagining Rodin and Rilke watching sunsets together. But what I said felt truest of all—I am starved for all stories of kindness. The young man delivering diapers to immigrant families in Maine. The woman sending socks to my friend with cancer. The stranger who walked a labyrinth with me. My husband offering me the last egg in the carton. Anyone who smiles and says hello in the grocery store aisles. Anyone who says hello back.

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In These Dark Days

January 28, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
From what darkness in its center
does the amaryllis call forth
the tall green stalk, the muscular bud,
the voluptuous petals pealing back
from the center like radiant red bells?
What impossible sun shines
inside the rough-skinned bulb
to generate such lushness,
such extravagant beauty?
I want to know it, to trust it,
this bright immensity that pulses through
what is darkest in me, this life force
that cannot fit inside, that thrusts
through the desiccated skins
of my exhausted hopes to reveal itself
vulnerable and soft, vital, astonishing,
belonging to no one, alive within us all.

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Listening for the Singing

January 27, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
Everything and everywhere is all here. It’s always been here.
—Bunkong Tuon, “Year of the Snake”
 
 
All the peace that has ever been
and will ever be is here now.
Hard not to focus
on the noose of injustice,
which is, of course, always here, too.
As it has always been.
As it will always be.
To praise the world is to praise it all.
How hard to praise it all.
I have heard giraffes make a low hum
in the night, a way, scientists think,
to help them find each other in the dark.
Perhaps this is why I find myself
singing so much in these darkened days—
a way to call to the others,
let them know as the noose tightens
we are here together.
And when it is especially hard,
I listen. Mostly, I trust peace is always here.
Still the relief to hear the singing.
I know am not alone.

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Fact Checking

January 27, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
When a gator is chasing you,
he said, you run away,
but zig zag. They can scent you,
and they’re fast, but they aren’t
agile enough to turn well. And
this is how I might have become
a gator bite. His advice sounded good,
and it was echoed by others I met,
but fact is the best bet to survive
a gator attack is to back up slow
with the hands in the air to look big.
If it charges, then run. Fast.
In a straight line. No zagging.
They’re quick, but tire easily on land.
How many other stories do I trust
every day, not thinking to look them up?
How many people have I fed to the gators?
The world has never been swampier.
The need to check what we’re told is great.
Look friend, here comes a gator even now.
Face him. Raise your arms. Back away slow.
Don’t turn your back if you can help it.
They look more like people than you’d think.
 
 

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

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In Broad Daylight

January 26, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
I take my rage to the river.
A heron flies into the wind.
I let myself be opened
by the great gray wings
and the great gray sky
and the great gray largeness of water,
not to rid myself of rage
but to become a clearer channel
to meet the chest-scouring,
scab-clawing, cell-screaming,
throat-burning fury of rage
and remind my heart I can
know all this rage, can be
feral with rage and still
keep on loving the world.

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One Inward

January 24, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
only when buffeted
by the windstorm do I truly notice
how still I can be

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With My Open Heart as Bait

January 23, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
What are you catching today?
I asked the man on the pier.
Nothin’, he said.
What do you wish you were catching?
I asked.
Anything, he said.
And could I be so brave?
Could I throw out my line
to the ocean of the world,
stand there at the edge,
patient and still,
and say to life, anything,
anything at all, whatever you give me,
I’ll reel it in. I’ll take it.

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A Great Shining

January 23, 2026 by Rosemerry

 

                  inspired by Maya Stein’s 10-line poem form
 
 
What if, in this moment, every person on earth thinks of someone who makes us feel cherished, known, safe? What if we let ourselves linger in this moment of connection? What might happen inside each body? What might happen in the world as in unison our breaths begin to even and slow? Would the pulsing of our hearts begin to synch, the way heart cells in a petri dish come to keep time with each other? What is earth if not a great experiment in which we are all both observer and observed? How long could it last, this rhythmic communion between jailor and prisoner, oppressor and oppressed, between fighter and fighter, maker and destroyer, parent and child, liar and believer, all of us thinking of love? Foolish, perhaps, to imagine such impossible moments. But more foolish not to imagine such things. Even now, I’m thinking of someone. It feels like the moon is inside me.

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One Reflexive

January 21, 2026 by Rosemerry

the way the pupil knows
to widen in the dark
in these darkening days, this heart

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