Apology

I wanted to shine a bare bulb
on that moment when I thought
I was right and you were wrong.
I wanted brash. Wanted glaring.
Wanted blatant, flagrant proof.
Now, in this moment of darkness,
I don’t care about right or wrong.
Don’t care about fault or blame.
I long to bring you starlight,
candlelight, firefly light—
the kind of glow that touches
everything with tenderness—
even our most prickly parts.
And whatever light lives inside us—
the light we house but do not own—
I want to discover that now
so in this darkest moment
we might find each other,
might find, even, ourselves.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com January 22, 2022 

Mornings at Blackwater Pond

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.

 

Mary Oliver, Red Bird (Beacon Press, 2009)

On Memorial Day

I think of every human
who has given their life
to fight not for war
but for peace. I think
of every mother and father
and son and daughter,
every baker and painter
and teacher and builder
who has learned to use
a weapon to save
the people and places
they love. I think of love—
how the Ukrainian woman
said tonight she had
never been more aware
of how good humans can be—
and how she’s learned this
midst bombs and blood
and broken trust and shattered
glass. I think of how peace
is a choice we make with
every smallest action we take.
I think of the pen in my own hand.
What will I do with it?

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com May 26, 2024

Talk the Everyday

Let’s talk the everyday world:
the weather, the recent misgivings,
the funny story. Let’s smile
at the right moments, nod
our heads with a listener’s intent,
lock our eyes only for the few
seconds polite society approves.

While we are busy looking for
the red carpet to roll out
or for the door to open in welcome,
we don't notice the unspoken conversation,
the one our hearts speak to each other
in the sacred meeting ground between us;

where we test the water for safety,
hold a wet finger up to heaven
to feel which way the wind blows,
and hold out our empty hands to show
we have sheathed our weapons.

On the surface, I may say
“I am fine, and you?” but,
in the other conversation,
I say "my heart is broken open.
How about yours?"

 

Nick LeForce, nickleforce.com April 22, 2022

Tucson hospital, waiting room

The visitors outside the icu,
                   After first greetings, don’t have much to say.
And yet, an idle gazing on the view
                   Of cars parked in the warming desert day,
Waiting themselves in silence, will not do.

And so, they speak of where their children live,
                   Now that they’re grown with children of their own,
Of one’s tenacity or initiative,
                   A grandchild’s trophy, grades, or broken bone.
No detail is too trivial to give.

Their voices hide those distant beeps and hums
                   That hint of purposes they only guess.
And as they laugh, that place, it seems, becomes
                   One where old women praise a young girl’s dress
And she, in turn, shows off her speed at sums.

But when, from time to time, a nurse appears
                   And summons someone through the heavy door,
They leave off reminiscing of past years,
                   And find the window’s blazing scene once more,
In silence wondering whose disaster nears.

 

James Matthew Wilson, The New Criterion vol 42, #7 (March 20, 2024)

But I'm Tired

If I weren’t so tired, I’d get out there in that garden
and grow some green beans, stringless and tender
and fleshy. I’d grow some grapes, then peel them
and pass them out to all my friends.

If I weren’t so tired, I’d plant some garlic for my mom.
I’d bake gingerbread men. Houses, too.
And then I would scamper up a mountain
the way goats do, and I’d do all that before noon.

If I weren’t so tired, I’d introduce a goldfish
to a gorilla, and then write a play based on
what they’d say to each other. I’d laminate maps
for migrating geese they could wear around their necks.

Yeah, I think I’d go to the tropics and pick up
all the old tails that geckos had lost and return them
to their owners. And I’d make special pillows
for baby giraffes to land on when they’re born.

So much to do, I’ve got grasshopper mind, jumping
and leaping all the time—from how I might help
the glaciers grow to how I might make the galaxy go
just a little bit slower so that there’s more time

for us all to sleep so we’re not always too tired
to do all the things we want to do. Like grow
some grapes, and peel them, too, then offer them
to good friends like you. Or just wash the dishes,

Or get dressed, make the bed. I would, you know, if …

 

Merry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com August 25, 2014

Scaffolding

Masons, when they start upon a building,

Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,

Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done

Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be

Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall

Confident that we have built our wall.

 

Seamus Heaney, Poem in Your Pocket Day, The League of Canadian Poets, poets.ca 

Sow It All

             Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
           it remains just a single grain;
           but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
                        —John 12.24

You are not just one seed.
You don’t have to go and die for Jesus.
You are a whole bag of seeds.
Strew yourself in this world.

With every act of kindness or generosity,
every time you forgive,
another seed slips through your fingers.
Every time you care about someone,
even a stranger, especially when it’s risky,
you scatter a handful of seeds.
Let them go.
Toss your love wildly into this world.

Scatter seeds in good soil and poor.
Many will be eaten by birds
or trampled under foot.
But only the ones you throw away will grow.

You have a whole bag of love. Sow it all.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes. unfoldinglight.net March 11, 2024 

Legacy

Far away my mother
reaches across the bed
for my father’s hand
that isn’t there. Still,
she says, she almost
feels it, just as I almost,
even now, feel her hand
rubbing the gentle pad
of her thumb across
my own thumbnail.
Perhaps someday
when I am gone,
my daughter, too,
will almost feel a whisper
of a kiss on her brow
that reminds her how
I kiss her tonight,
as always, with my lips
pressed to that place
just above her eyes
as I murmur that I love her.
Perhaps it will surprise
her how real it still feels,
the words no longer audible,
but I hope by then
she will know them by heart.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com May 11, 2024 

Something

The minute the doctor says colon cancer

you hardly hear anything else.

He says other things, something

about something. Tests need to be done,

but with the symptoms and family something,

excess weight, something about smoking,

all of that together means something something

something something, his voice a dumb hum

like the sound of surf you know must be pounding,

but the glass window that has dropped down

between you allows only a muffled hiss

like something something. He writes a prescription

for something, which might be needed, he admits.

He hands you something, says something, says goodbye,

and you say something. In the car your wife says

something something and something about dinner,

about needing to eat, and the doctor wanting tests

doesn’t mean anything, nothing, and something

something something about not borrowing trouble

or something. You pull into a restaurant

where you do not eat but sit watching her

eat something, two plates of something,

blurry in an afternoon sun thick as ketchup,

as you drink a glass of something-cola

and try to recall what the doctor said

about something he said was important,

a grave matter of something or something else.

 

James Valvis, loc.org Library of Congress Poetry 180 Project, accessed on May, 16, 2024

On Visiting the Grave of My Stillborn Little Girl

Sunday July 4th 1836

I made a vow within my soul, O Child,
When thou wert laid beside my weary heart,
With marks of death on every tender part
That, if in time a living infant smiled,
Winning my ear with gentle sounds of love
In sunshine of such joy, I still would save
A green rest for thy memory, O Dove!
And oft times visit thy small, nameless grave.
Thee have I not forgot, my firstborn, though
Whose eyes ne'er opened to my wistful gaze,
Whose sufferings stamped with pain thy little brow;
I think of thee in these far happier days,
And thou, my child, from thy bright heaven see
How well I keep my faithful vow to thee.

 

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Complete Poems of Elizabeth Gaskell (Golgotha Press, 2010)

In Hand

Each night before dinner
I slide my hand, palm up,
across the table toward yours,
and always, you rest your hand on mine,
the way a petal might land on a leaf,
the way a leaf might land on grass.
So gentle your hand
that is equally at home in my hand
as it is in the engine of an old Toyota truck
or tightening a valve on the irrigation pump,
wielding a chainsaw or dripping hot wax
onto a ski before scraping it off.
 
So many ways I don’t know your hands—
how they fidgeted when you were a child,
how they fumbled when you first tied a shoe,
what they clutched when you felt alone.
But now, they are nearly as familiar to me
as my own hands—how your hands
flutter up to press to your lips,
how they cup each other to create
a small cave you breathe into when thinking,
how they pull through my hair
when I lay my head in your lap,
how they help me to know my own shape,
how one hand of yours will rest
against one hand of mine
to tether us even in sleep.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com May 9, 2024

A Slice of Wedding Cake

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
     Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
     And missionary endeavor, nine times out of ten.

Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,
     Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
     How well women behave, and always have behaved).

Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
     Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
     Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.

Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
     Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
     At the expense of man?
                                                  Do I?
                                                              It might be so.

 

Robert Graves, Collected Poems (Faber and Faber, 1975)

The Land of Beginning Again

I wish that there were some wonderful place
In the Land of Beginning Again.
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all of our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
and never put on again.
I wish we could come on it all unaware,
Like the hunter who finds a lost trail;
And I wish that the one whom our blindness had done
The greatest injustice of all
Could be there at the gates
like an old friend that waits
For the comrade he's gladdest to hail.
We would find all the things we intended to do
But forgot, and remembered too late,
Little praises unspoken, little promises broken,
And all the thousand and one
Little duties neglected that might have perfected
The day for one less fortunate.
It wouldn't be possible not to be kind
In the Land of Beginning Again,
And the ones we misjudged
and the ones whom we grudged
their moments of victory here,
Would find in the grasp of our loving hand-clasp
More than penitent lips could explain...
So I wish that there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches,
And all of our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
And never put on again.

 

Louisa Fletcher, The Land of Beginning Again (Nabu Press, 2011) 

Friends

   I do not call you servants any longer...
              but I have called you friends.
                                     —John 15.15


Jesus will have no hierarchies,
no separations or divisions,
not even between us and him.
“Call no one good but God.”
There are no greater and lesser,
no servants and masters,
no insiders and outsiders.
Not even believers and unbelievers.
Only friends, peers, siblings, companions.
Every stranger is a sibling.
Every person you meet is a friend
for whom you would lay down your life.
There is no “them.” There is only us.
In the love of Christ, befriend this world
and everyone in it;
you will never be alone.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net May 3, 2024

What Is the Greatest Gift?

What is the greatest gift?

Could it be the world itself — the oceans, the meadowlark, the patience of the trees in the wind?

Could it be love, with its sweet clamor of passion?

Something else — something else entirely

holds me in thrall.

That you have a life that I wonder about

more than I wonder about my own.

That you have a life — courteous, intelligent —

that I wonder about more than I wonder about my own. That you have a soul

— your own, no one else’s — that I wonder about more than I wonder about

my own. So that I find my soul clapping its hands for yours more than my own.

Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver Book Club Facebook Group accessed on March 24, 2024 

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,

    All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

    Soaring fire that sways and sings,

And children's faces looking up

Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,  

    Music like a curve of gold,

Scent of pine trees in the rain,

    Eyes that love you, arms that hold,

And for your spirit's still delight,

Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,

    Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of peace

    Count many a year of strife well lost,

And for a breath of ecstacy

Give all you have been, or could be.

Sara Teasdale, public domain

Abandoned Farmhouse

 

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

 

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

 

Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars

in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm—a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

Ted Kooser, Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburg Press, 1980)