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For What Ails Us

March 25, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
Wini weeps as she tells me “everyone is so broken,” 
and a small shrine appears in the tear on her cheek.
I kneel inside it as it slips to her chin.
My throat clenches, my own heart widens,
enlivened by how deeply Wini cares, 
and somehow her heartache begins to mend 
my own grief for this cruel and callous world.
More than any beauty. More than the uplifting song 
of the red wing black bird trilling through the open window.
More than the scent of basil and lemon. 
More than the dark silhouette of two herons winging 
through the nectarine sunset. Wini’s tears heal me. 
Shared ache becomes its own medicine. 
No. Not the ache. The medicine is in the love that fuels 
the ache. It feels so right, I forget to wish it didn’t hurt.

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Devil’s Advocate: The Ruler Speaks

March 23, 2026 by Rosemerry


Ask a surgeon if a millimeter matters. 
how the smallest measure marks
the difference between a heartbeat 
and a silence that lasts forever. 
I’ve seen you, poet, take joy in ambiguity, 
in word bending, word twisting, word play. 
“So many ways to do it right,” you say.
What if, for a day, you tried to speak
as impeccably as I measure?
What would be clearer? What 
would be lost? What if you knew 
only the most precise word 
could save another’s light? Or your own? 
You know it’s true because
words have saved you—
Think of Rilke. Neruda. Dickinson. Frost. 
Precision matters. In poetry, too. 
Even what’s free has a cost. 

Oh friends, this poem that began just playing with metaphor got me really thinking… I love the way poems help us challenge what we think we know. 

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The Shift

March 22, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
She wanted a little room for thinking. 
With no room available, 
she settled for a chair. 
She sat there. 
To anyone else, it might have looked 
as if nothing was happening. 
Inside her, whole foundations 
were crumbling. Maps were 
unmapping. Paths
were unpathing. A tornado
of doubt did its perfect work.
Somewhere there was light.
No one else could see the rubble
rising all around her.
Also in that wreckage, 
her belief in fixing.
God, she was raw.
Now, now 
there was room.  

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Heart Medicine

March 21, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
To stay open 
 is what I wanted.
  Though winter and war
   have taught me 
    the importance of refuge. 
 
Even then, like a wild rabbit 
 that is no less soft
  and no less gentle
   inside its dark burrow,
    the heart in its shelter
     finds ways to stay open, 
      if not to the world, 
       at least to whatever
        it is that shines
         through the self,
          and the deep remove 
           becomes a chance
            to steep in tenderness
 
before re-emerging again 
 into the world 
  with all its threats
   and dangers, 
    with all its green 
     and radiant beauty.

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Celebrate with Me!

March 20, 2026 by Rosemerry

It was exactly 20 years ago on the Spring Equinox in 2006 that I began a daily poem practice. On that day, I committed to write a poem a day for 30 days. I thought that sounded impossible. But now it is over 7,300 days later. And the daily practice has completely changed everything about how I meet the world. Thank you for joining me in this daily practice … I’m so grateful you’re here seeing what happens next with me! 

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This Time

March 20, 2026 by Rosemerry



Driving past the graveyard
listening to news
as it explodes—
while we breathe 
it’s never too late
to choose compassion.

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In a Name?

March 20, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
In the moment when a person names a child, 
Gail tells me, it is said a sacred wisdom
shines through the namer that connects the child’s
soul to their character, infusing the new being 
with what they need for this life. 
 
In these days of heartache and horror,
I think of my mother holding me wet in her arms
for the first time, when she whispered syllables 
that charged me with joy—that sincere, love-drenched 
moment out of which my whole life has bloomed.
 
Perhaps this is why I cry when Gail tells me
about the magic of that moment. It’s as if mom 
gifted me an underground spring that flows 
even when the land around it is dry. Even when 
it doesn’t rain. For years. Still, that water flows.

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Manual

March 18, 2026 by Rosemerry



 
The hands are churches that worship the world.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Daily”
 
 
To pour water over the aloe, 
the cyclamen, the jade plant, the cactus,
this, too, is prayer. Prayer in touching 
my own dry lips, marveling at the fullness
beneath fingertips. Worship in hefting
the tea pot by its thick black handle. 
Worship in squeezing the sudsy warm sponge.
Just yesterday, while we were driving,
Art said to me, “Why not open to the marvelous?” 
I equated marvelous with the grand, the inexplicable, 
even the strange. It didn’t occur to me then 
that gripping the smooth, leather arc of steering wheel 
is marvelous, cradling the white paper cup full of coffee 
is marvelous, fingering the waffle pattern on the dishcloth
as I fold it is marvelous. Marvelous, flipping through 
skin-thin pages of notebooks. Marvelous
and sacred, my palm resting on my husband’s thigh.
Marvelous, these knobby knuckles, how they 
curl around the hair brush. Sacred, 
the pillowed pads of these fingers, how they 
trace the lines of my husband’s face,
how they twist and tug wool around the knitting
needles, how they tap at the keyboard to fashion
language out of feeling, how they rest above my heart
and translate into praise that beat, faithful and familiar.

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Places I Long to Go

March 18, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
Every time we pass this spot on the dusty river trail, 
my daughter gazes across the water to the other side, 
shaded by cliffs, where moss grows thick and deep. 
I would love to sleep on that moss, she says, 
as her eyes go gauzy, her voice grows soft.
Living in high desert, as we do, mossy places are few.
As a girl, I had in my bedroom a whole wall covered 
with a mural of a Japanese garden, its gray rocks
mostly covered in green. I, too, dreamed of stepping 
into in a place so lush, so verdant, so alive even rocks 
proved fertile ground. To find that kind of fertility inside me—
inviting what is sensual, vital, to flourish in the barren, 
desiccated places in my heart—that is my new dream. 
But it is not always easy to let in the dark. Not always easy 
to let what is hard in me be broken down so something 
might grow. There are places I long to go with my girl. 
Some are nearby, just across the stream. 
Some, breath close, are much harder to travel to.  
 

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The Message

March 16, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
In amber lights, the electronic display
on the highway message sign read:
Slow down … for the unknown. 
And I did. All day. I drove slower.
Walked slower. Typed slower. Ate
slower. My eyes trained on the horizon, 
my whole body sensitive, hyper-alive,
as if a deer might leap out, as if a great 
piñata might appear, as if a lover 
might curl his wicked finger, as if 
the sky itself might write me a love letter, 
as if the road might lift like a ribbon in the wind,
as if anything, anything could happen, 
anything, even nothing. 

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