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Survival

February 3, 2026 by Rosemerry

 

                  with thanks to Brian McLaren
 
 
Sometimes when I deeply listen,
the seeds of another’s words
land in the soil of me.
Days later, the roots of what
they said are still tendrilling
into my dendrites, and
through synaptic miracle grow,
soon my whole neural network
has lit up, blooming with a new
way of thinking. Like last week
when I heard a man ask,
How does my rage help me
stay on the path of love?
He was responding to a question
he heard me ask in response
to a question I heard someone
else ask. And this is how listening
transforms the world. We adapt
through cross-pollination.
Your thoughts and my thoughts
breed something new—like
this love and rage hybrid now growing
in me. Diversity is the key to survive.
The paths are always changing.

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Sometimes, I Forget How to Listen

February 1, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
Listen with the ear of your heart.
from the Prologue to the Rule of Saint Benedict
 
Because words can be rubber bullets,
can be pepper spray, can be cuffs.
Scared, my ears become rabbits
that burrow and hide. Angry,
my ears become stone gates
that refuse to let anything in.
It’s so painful to hear
the rhetoric of hate. Burns
like tear gas. Stuns and disorients
like flash-bang grenades.
No part of me then can believe
there is a sliver of divinity in you
that I want or need to listen to.
It is so hard to listen.
What if we do not listen?
I want to train my ears to hear
beneath the invective. Want
to listen beneath the attack.
What if I could hear the human
in you and not only the weapons
of your words? What if you could hear
the human in me and find a piece
of yourself? What if we left all our mouths
at home and let only our ears
gather in the streets?
Would we hear, then, the sounds
of each other’s breath, proof
of our mutual humanness?
What peace might arrive for a moment
if we listened, all of us miracles,
softening into that generous silence,
listening with the ears of our hearts
as the cold wind swirls all around?

*after reading “My Mouth (An Apology)” by Tom Holmes

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The Flourishing to Come

February 1, 2026 by Rosemerry


on Imbolc, 2026
 
 
Midwinter, in Minnesota,
they are planting seeds
in the cold, seeds of kindness,
community, compassion,
ferocity. In the streets,
they plant seeds of integrity,
diversity, equality, justice.
On pavement and in snow,
they plant democracy.
The light is growing.
Imagine the beauty
if even half these seeds take.
What a life that will be when
they bloom. Imagine
all that goodness reseeding,
spreading like wildflowers.
Goodness burgeoning,
rampant, tenacious as weeds.

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Currents

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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