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She Couldn’t Have Planned It This Way,

February 8, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
to arrive right here on this February morning
with the wind gently shaking the dried grasses
of the field and the chickadees flitting up and down
the empty cottonwood branches, and the river
barely a whisper beneath the ice. But all of it, since
long before her birth, has led her to this moment of winter
sunshine warming her cheek at the same time she
feels the tight clench in her chest that has
not released for a week. Hello clench. Of course,
it is here, the anger, the fear. What is here?
What else is here? Today, she opens to touch it all,
the way a child might touch both a smooth stone
and thorn. More truly, she is touched by the world.
Already this moment is different from the moment before.
And right now, she is here for it. For the ache. The birds.
The cloudless blue sky. All unfolds as it will. She feels
her own unfolding, too, opening to the surprise that though
unplanned, this moment could not have been otherwise.

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Gesture

February 7, 2026 by Rosemerry

 

 
 
Most days, I rearrange the small stones
on the front porch into a new semblance
of a heart. What moves them? The wind?
A mouse? I gently reshape them with my palms.
They have been here over four years now,
since the day you placed them beside the door,
the day my son did not come home.
Two dozen-ish penny-sized gray and white stones.
Rough to the fingertips, soft to the spirit.
You taught me how simply we might care
for each other with whatever is here.
Small rocks. Fallen petals. Tall stems
of dry grass. A touch of love.
Two willing hands.

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When I Prayed for Proof of Good in the World

February 5, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
It’s as if I’m a vase,
I thought, as
two musicians
poured all that
hard-won beauty
into me, and holding
it, felt such gratefulness,
then stunned by how
truly I long to pour
all that same beauty
into you, my prayer
transformed:
please let me be
a pitcher.

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Faith

February 4, 2026 by Rosemerry




 
Even now, I am becoming
wind, something less flesh, more
movement, more current, less
here, more everywhere. Though
the moment I think I know this truth,
the knowing re-solids me,
makes me into clay that pretends it is wind.
But becoming clay again, I am destined
to crumble, disintegrate, until
I am dust and once again one
with the wind. How to trust anything
then, except this infinite becoming and
rebecoming—and whatever
it is that is alive inside it all.
That. I put my faith in that.

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What Joins Us

February 3, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
At last the river is covered in ice,
a vast white sheet from bank
to bank. A woman, or a rabbit,
could use to cross what usually
feels uncrossable. I think
of William Stafford standing beside
the frozen Methow river, asking a question.
The silent river was his answer.
Later today I will put on my old navy coat
and my big old rubber boots and walk
to the shore with my satchel of questions,
the ones that writhe and twist in me,
the ones that make me tremble.
Perhaps, you, too, will bring your questions
to a shore where winter has hidden the song.
If you have no river, any quiet space will do.
We can stand there together
at the edge of no separation
to see which questions spill out.
No matter where we stand,
we can listen to the silence
that crosses all boundaries, listen,
together, and wade into the current
beneath all listening.
 

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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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