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After Carmell Tells Me about Her Trip to India

March 8, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
And when the gates swung wide and my friend arrived at the palace, the vast grounds were emerald and lush, lined with tropical trees, and a full staff greeted her at the great door where a man led her through a courtyard filled with night-blooming jasmine spilling their sweet scent into the dark, and just outside the door to her room was a large blue pool, and when she asked if it were too late to swim that night, the man said, Madame, the palace is yours. And he gave her a large brass key. Her enthusiasm entered me as she gushed of her rooms, antechamber after antechamber before reaching the glorious bed, the low slung divans piled with pillows. Today, the palace is the red slickrock towers as I drive through the canyons of Utah. The palace is the delirious deep blue trance of clear Colorado sky. The palace is the sharp scent of sage by the side of the road that wraps me in silvery pungent perfume when I stop to stretch my cramping legs. It’s in soft spring grass now growing from desert dust, growing like green praise after recent rain. I have been given the key to the palace, and it’s made of nothing more than the willingness to offer the world my attention. Black call of crow. Subtle shine of low sun on dark varnished cliffs. Low hum of tires on the highway. It’s yours, they all say. The palace is yours. Here’s the key. Receive it. Receive it.

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While Listening to Others Talk about Poems in Small Groups

March 7, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
Their voices sound
like giddy bees
as phrases swirl
and interweave
and poems open
like peonies—
a hush comes in
like a gentle breeze
as their wonder lands,
wades deeper in
to gather any gold
that sticks,
and though I cannot
hear what any
one voice is saying,
I taste with ears
inside the buzz
all the glorious makings
of honey.

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One in the Blizzard

March 7, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
following tire tracks in the snow
the whole world
reduced to two lines

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The Single Instant

March 5, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
Inspired by Camille Claudel’s sculpture “The Wave”
 
Almost like a fist
the great wave of war
rises now, arching,
all froth and force,
and in the single instant
before the crash,
before our demise is cast
in onyx or bronze,
before everything
we’ve made is smashed
like plaster on the floor,
this chance to conceive
the world as it could be,
the chance to take
each other’s hands
and hold them fast
so the terrible wave
can’t separate us.
The wave will break.
We will be towed and tossed.
My friends, it matters
that we stay together.
 
to see this sculpture, visit here

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Orbit

March 4, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
I thought I was holding grief.
Tonight I see grief is holding me.
Not with a vice grip. Not with a fist.
More the way gravity
holds the earth to the sun—
a force without which our planet
would lose all warmth, all life.
Love has many names. Grief is one,
and I am grateful tonight for the way
it tethers me not only to pain but
to beauty, goodness, connection.
Tonight I see grief not as a problem
to be solved but as an energy to explore,
to move with, to circle what is beloved.
There is some comfort even in knowing
it will never let me go. It is right that it
should hold me, even as I turn and turn.

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Formative

March 3, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
I would sit in the circle,
gut flopping like a fish
while the fox walked around
to pat us each on the head.
Duck. Duck. Duck.
Bright fizz of adrenaline
frothing in the blood
as the hand came closer.
Duck. Duck.
Please pick me. Don’t pick me.
Half wanting to be chosen,
half wanting not,
because I was the child
who had to stew in the pot
for five more rounds
because I’d get caught.
Duck. Duck.
Not wanting to be chosen
’cause I knew I’d sit alone.
Oh, shame of the center.
Shame of being slow.
Please pick me. Don’t pick me.
Oh. I am not the goose.
Oh, longing to be chosen,
wanting the proof
that I could be a child
other children would choose.
 

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The Last Parent Teacher Conferences

March 3, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
If I were like Suzanne Valadon,
fearlessly painting self-portraits as I age,
I would paint this moment
when I wander the high school halls
between teacher conferences, this moment
when I’m so full of love for the girl
who will graduate this spring
that I’m weeping and laughing
beside yellow lockers and posters
for basketball games. Gratefulness
can break a heart open as easily as sorrow.
In fact, the tear as it reaches the curve
of my lips, I think it would fill the whole frame.

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After

March 2, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
On this day after
my country bombed
a girls’ school
across the world,
part of me does not
wish to meet the day.
But just after dawn,
I wake to the relentless
honking, honking
of geese returning
from far away
to make a home again
in our yard.
I want to rewrite
yesterday so every girl
who went to school
also came home
to her family,
so every mother and father
woke this morning knowing
their child was safe in their bed.
I am so filled with horror—
we killed them—
I don’t know how to rise.
But the great noise
of the geese returning,
that harsh and strangled sound,
pulls me into the world
to meet whatever the day brings.
A goose wanders past my window,
regal with her long black throat,
proof that life goes on.
Even when we can’t imagine how.
Even then.   

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Illogic

February 28, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
deploying bombs
to achieve lasting peace—
like planting barbed wire
and expecting to grow
a rose bush

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One Garden

February 28, 2026 by Rosemerry


 
 
I am no longer surprised
when strange, exotic
blooms appear in my mind,
knowing now how seeds
arrive on the wind from everywhere.
Now, I am less likely to label
something weed simply because
I didn’t plant it myself.
At the same time, I want
to be discerning, knowing
whatever I choose to grow might
appear soon in the soil of you,
so I am cautious when sowing
bulbs of anger, saplings of judgment,
thorns of certainty.
I want us all to plant great beds
of unanswerable questions
and tend the mystery together.
How else might it change
what these hands do when I
trust every choice matters?

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