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The Elephant in the Room

June 4, 2026 by Rosemerry


                        for Karen Chamberlain
 
 
I carry it with me everywhere, 
this small wooden elephant
that sat for years on the writing desk
of my friend, a late-night writer,
a peach jam maker, lover of poets.
I have seen the way it makes shy men
smile when they hold it in their palms.
I have heard the voices of women break open
as they share the ache beneath their skin
when the elephant sits on the table 
in front of them. I am not saying 
the elephant is magic, but trust me, 
the elephant is magic. Not the wood itself, 
but the belief it carries—that all of us 
have a life worthy of our wonder, 
all of us have stories for sharing.
When the elephant enters a circle, 
each time I rediscover how vast the world 
becomes when we listen to each other. 

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The Conversation

June 3, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
I was sitting beside my mother on the couch,
knitting a blanket for my girl. My mother held
the yarn in her lap, a cloud of muted pinks. 
Outside, the tall dry grasses weaved 
in golden evening light. A Western Warbling Vireo 
rambled on in its jumbled, warbly way. Mom spoke 
of her plans for dinner the next night
and I knit two, purled six, knit two, purled six. 
She guided the soft wool through her fingers,
keeping just the right amount of slack. I felt
such a tide of love for her. Wanted to tell her 
I’m sorry for every time I’ve been hardened, 
every time I’ve pushed her away instead 
of pulling her close. I wanted to whisper
the love beyond words, some sentence true 
as the sweetness I felt today sitting beside her 
in the sun in the grass while we waited 
for a Belted Kingfisher or Northern Yellow Warbler 
to fly across the pond. But to name a feeling is so
much harder than naming a bird. So when the row 
was done, I rested my head on her shoulder, closed 
my eyes and nuzzled in. There was only softness 
in me then. I’d like to think she translated what 
I meant. Just as I knew what she was saying to me 
with each length of unspooling yarn: I know 
how you love me. I know your heart. I love you, too, 
my girl. By the time we rose, we were held 
by the dark. Even the swallows were quiet.

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Watching My Mother Pull Bindweed

June 2, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
With a white plastic five-gallon bucket
as a stool, she sits in the middle
of my garden’s gravel path and wrestles
the long notched rod through the stones.
She moves her arm slowly, 
her back hunched over her task.
I see in her body her father’s body,
how he, too, would toil in the gardens
of others for hours, tool in hand, patient
and thorough. I watch as mom dangles
a slender white root in the air 
to marvel at its twisted length.
I hear her triumphant ha!
as she adds it to the small but 
growing pile of roots and leaves.
The bindweed will grow back
with admirable speed, but she makes
an enduring mark—not in the rows,
but in the heart of this daughter, 
teaching me again how it is we find joy 
offering ourselves in service to each other. 
 

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While Transplanting Calendula

June 2, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
How gently I move the volunteer sprouts
out of the potato bed and into another row,
careful to gather the fragile roots with a bit
of damp dirt, tamping lightly around the slender stem.
How fragile it all can be. I think of how tenderly
this morning my husband touched my face,
as if too well aware of how a single moment
can change everything. We folded 
into each other then like two petals
of a single flower. In the garden, 
I stare at the spindly transplants, 
a new row of tiny, rounded green leaves.
A delicate ache rises in me, charged with
love for the spare beauty of what is here
and an awareness of how the simplest scrape 
can make a whole world disappear.

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Sometimes When You Don’t Know What to Say

June 1, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
It’s because to try to describe this feeling is 
to render it instantly dull, flat. 
It’s like when you see a rock on the bottom
of the river—all shimmering and bright—
but the moment you bring it to the air
to share it, what seemed precious 
becomes cloudy, mundane, a dumb lump,
the stuff of filler in a suburban parking lot.
 
And so you learn to be quiet, to let your syllables 
float away like dry leaves. What is heaviest 
stays. Does not wash away. Is polished by friction, years. 
Sometimes you meet others in the river. What shines 
shines. Together you stare, stunned by the damn beauty. 
Maybe you hold hands. Watch the light as it plays.

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Not the Worst

May 30, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
Sometimes the worst doesn’t happen. 
  The flash flood doesn’t flow through the first floor 
    of your home. The bear doesn’t tear into your tent.
      But sometimes the train comes around a bend,
    hits a rockfall and comes off the track. Sometimes
  the rocket explodes in roiling orange fireball of methane fuel.
Sometimes the car launches from the highway into the air 
  and crashes, skids, takes out a tree, a bush, 
    then launches again, only to roll and roll. 
      When the worst happens, it doesn’t take long
    before the inner narrator spins tale after tale  
  of how much worse it could be. It can always
be worse. Knowing this, what a gift today 
  to drive up to the front door, the house still intact, 
    to walk into the home and greet both cats, 
      to water the succulents on the kitchen shelf, 
    reheat the soup from the night before, pour 
  hot water over the mint tea, hold hands 
with beloveds, say I love you, say grace.

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How the Communication Works Now

May 29, 2026 by Rosemerry

Tonight I can’t see the shape of the moon
behind a cluster of clouds, but I see 
the bright radiance seeping through the edges 
and know the moon is there—
that is how it is when I speak out loud 
to my father and son. Hi Dad, I say. 
Hi Finn. I love you. I miss you. 
And aren’t you so proud of our girl?
As I walk through the dark, scent of rain
in each breath, I can’t hear the shape 
of their words in my ears. But I swear, 
I feel it, the shine. 

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The Moment I Hope to Remember

May 28, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
sitting on the couch, 
our bodies lean into each other—
two aspen trees, shared roots

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One at Graduation

May 28, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
for every desk,
there was a doorway—
the threshold 
now your teacher

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The Day Before Graduation

May 27, 2026 by Rosemerry


for Vivian
 
Already she knows terrible things happen. 
Already she knows the pleasure of scrambling
in the woods at night with friends and singing
too loud and making bad choices that are sometimes
exactly the right choices. She knows sobs and 
silliness. She knows how much humans can hurt
each other. She knows how a touch or a tender
word erases nothing but creates its own plot of trust. 
 
There was a time when my job was to protect her,
filling her pages with beauty and courage and honesty.
Now my job is mostly to love her, to give her her own pen. 
Because terrible things happen. And she is the one now 
who shapes her story. Every writer knows, we write 
what we know—and what we can’t ever know. 
I pray what emerges is the impossible—an irrational,
deep rooted love for this difficult, glorious world. 

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