Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Today’s Headline

February 11, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
And then one day, while I read
aloud to my husband the news
and felt the widening hole in my heart,
he raised his hand to quiet me.
I followed his gaze out the window
to see in the yard a small fluffy thing
with black and white eyespots on its head.
A northern pygmy owl beside our door,
stout body slightly smaller than my fist.
It turned its neck a full half circle
to look at me with bright yellow eyes.
In an instant, I shifted from disgust
with the world to awe. Awe for this
fierce bespeckled miracle, this wonder
of feather and beak and claw, this
small being in the grass looking back
at me as if to say, Here is also the news.
How surprising the world can be.
How quickly, when I let it, amazement
overwrites my fear and makes
of the hole in my heart a home.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

The Spreading

February 10, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
There’s a place in my brain where hate won’t grow.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Jerusalem”
 
 
Sometimes a seed of compassion
slips into my brain and lands in a place
where before only anger could grow.
These seeds appear
when I stop seeing humans
as only our actions and start
seeing all of us as walking wounds.
They appear when I see others
finding ways to be generous, to be kind.
If I offer the seed the barest scrap
of attention, it begins to grow roots.
Then a stem. Then seed leaves.
More leaves. A bud. But what allows
for this growth is far beyond me—
rather some gift that comes through
when me and my story get out of the way.
This is how I sometimes come to find
a whole field of inner daisies thriving
in a place I once torched to the dirt.
At first, they needed my constant care.
Then they reseeded again. And again.
They spread into such unpredictable
places. Sometimes outside my inner world.
The same way the seeds arrived in me.
Through kindness. Through love.
It’s beautiful.


—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Dear friends, 

Today was day 120 of the monks walking from Texas to Washington DC to bring awareness to mindfulness and peace, compassion and connection. Today, after 2,300 miles, they arrived. What an amazing way to shine light on what is good inside all of us. How do we embody peace instead of arguing for it? What a question to live into. 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Cast of Millions

February 9, 2026 by Rosemerry

There, on the dream marquis,
in big black all caps
were three words:
DEAR PEOPLE DARE.
I stood on the dream sidewalk
staring up into the vast
dream dark and thought,
someone made a movie
about tenderness—
real people finding courage
to offer love and care
to those who are wounded.
Which is all of us.
That’s when I woke,
determined to audition
for that show every day
for the rest of my life.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments »

Practicing Presence

February 8, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
and this, too,
this calling of chickadees,
and this, too,
this buzzing of flies,
and this, too,
this memory from last year,
and this, too,
this tending to right here,
and this, too,
this softening of my jaw,
and this, too,
this ache in my gut,
and this, too,
this turning toward now,
and this, too,
this reaching for more,
and this, too,
this throbbing tenderness,
and this, too,
this all of this,
and this, too,
this only this.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments »

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.
 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

Older Posts »