May 7, 2026 by Rosemerry
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged concrete poem, garden, glen velez, gong, music, silence | Leave a Comment »
Over four years after his death,
I still sleep with Skinny Puppy, the lovey
my boy treasured and slept with each night,
even into high school. Flat with no stuffing,
a soft square body with a small round head.
Every night in the dark, I tuck its worn,
brown fabric beneath my left arm,
let it nestle up against my heart.
Every morning, it’s still there.
I make it into the bed. I feel no shame
in wanting its slight weight against me.
Such simple comfort.
Not that I need an object for him to be with me.
I carry him inside. Close as breath.
But four years after his death, I like
the reminder he was here. I like
to remember how he loved soft things.
How he was capable of such tenderness
in the ways he held the world,
this world that could not manage to hold him.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged grief, stuffed animal, toy | 4 Comments »
May 5, 2026 by Rosemerry
Just because it is simple doesn’t mean you
can depend on good results. There are tricks
to make sure they pop. Preheat the buttered
pan at 450 degrees. Bring the eggs to room
temperature. Whirl them with salt till the whole
mixture froths. Warm the milk, but not too hot.
Melt the butter. Be stingy with flour. Mix only
as long as it takes to sing the first verse of Blackbird.
But do not invite guests to show off your prowess,
to boast how light, how airy, how balloon-ish-ly
your popovers rise. Pride will slip in and spoil
the batch. Pride, an ingredient so strong even
what’s foolproof goes flat. And even if the popovers rise,
that pride, oh my friend, you’ll taste it. You’ll taste it.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged baking, humility, instructions, popovers, pride | 3 Comments »
May 4, 2026 by Rosemerry
It is okay to be numb today,
to be stuck, to not want to move.
It is okay to be so exhausted
with the ache of meeting the world
that even the extravagant apple blossoms,
all fragrant and fluttersome,
look like dingy white scraps, used tissues.
It is necessary, even natural
to sometimes shut down,
to let the self be cold.
The wood frog can freeze
up to seventy percent of its body water,
can stop its own heart from beating,
It knows that to freeze for a season
is one way to survive.
It will thaw and revive come spring.
It’s okay for a time to slow down.
To slow to stopping.
To be more solid than flow.
I remember the years in the orchard when,
on the coldest nights, we watered the trees,
knowing how the process of freezing itself
releases latent heat and becomes
a source of warmth for its surroundings.
Oh wisdom of freezing. It’s not without cost.
Every fruit grower knows that some years,
there are no apples. That is how it is.
Other years, we delight in what ripens.
Those years, we feast on the sweetness.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged exhaustion, freezing, fruit tree, metaphor, numb, orchard, self-compassion, self-talk, wood frog | 12 Comments »
May 3, 2026 by Rosemerry
Just let the world amaze you.
—Augusta Kantra
I want to know these brittling bones
and sleepless nights as transformation,
my life an expression of the fundamental power
that drives the universe to dramatically change—
as bud becomes bloom becomes fruit
becomes soil; as star dust becomes
protoplanetary disks becomes asteroids
become planets; as girl becomes woman becomes
slower till she’s silence. As dinosaurs become fossils
and dodos become story. All transforms.
With no end, the universe remakes itself out of itself
again and again and again. Looking in the mirror,
I see in these wrinkles the chaos of early Earth
barraged by space rocks, then a million years
of rain, rain, rain, that somehow evolved
into this world of earthworms, and aspen leaves,
the spiraling song of canyon wren,
silk worms, pianos, cardamom tea, age spots,
night sweats, gray hair, cellular senescence,
and I entirely belong to this wild miasma
that is ever becoming, each morning,
each wrinkle a kind of transcendence,
a path to a place I’ve never been.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, transformation | 18 Comments »
May 3, 2026 by Rosemerry
More flowing than walking
she moves down the street,
her green dress billowing,
her shoulders bare.
Sometimes the world
asks us to do impossible math—
for instance to add more love
when already we are filled to capacity
with love. And again tonight, I meet it,
the impossible.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daughter, impossible, love, mother, prom | 3 Comments »
May 2, 2026 by Rosemerry
When no one
is looking
she touches
the wound
that hides
beneath
her smile
where the scion
of acceptance
was grafted
to her rootstock
of stubbornness.
Most people
don’t notice
the scar,
focused as they are
on the fruit,
but she
remembers
the cut,
the tissue exposed.
How tenderly
she traces
that place
where the union
was formed.
Since the wounding,
her fruits
have become
vibrant, complex,
so sharp, even tart,
and so sweet.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged apple, garden, grief, growth, orchard, tree, wound | Leave a Comment »
April 30, 2026 by Rosemerry
Trust is a porcupine
sitting on the highway
in the middle of the night
not bothering to raise
even one of his
thirty-thousand quills,
choosing instead to look
right into the oncoming
traffic, the shine
of a direct gaze
more effective
communication
than any sharpness,
any barb.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged connection, eye contact, porcupine, self-protection | Leave a Comment »
April 29, 2026 by Rosemerry
When I cannot
offer you this most
simple blessing,
it’s because I’ve
forgotten
for this moment
who I am.
I remember now.
Child of sunrise.
Beloved of the rain.
Sibling of silence.
Lost one who rows
through oceans of stars.
Found one who
has been forgiven
when forgiveness
seemed impossible.
What I mean to say—
I am grouchy.
Still. I am trying.
What I mean to say—
cursing the drought
has never once
made it rain.
What I mean to say—
may you be happy.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blessing, fussy, happiness | 4 Comments »
April 28, 2026 by Rosemerry
Most of the time, an aspen stand regenerates itself through cloning from its extensive underground connected root structure. But, sometimes, given very specific conditions, they can introduce genetic diversity through seed germination.
from Traveling Nature Journal, October 4, 2020
In the spirit of diversity
the aspen catkins
appear on the passes,
gathering low light
into acres of radiance
as they dangle
from bare limbs
in long clusters of gray fuzz
and all I want
for the rest of my life
is to be worthy of living
in a world with such
potent softness, such promise.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aspen, diversity, regeneration, softness, trees, worthiness | 7 Comments »