What the Day Gives

Suddenly, sun. Over my shoulder

in the middle of gray November

what I hoped to do comes back,

asking.

Across the street the fiery trees

hold onto their leaves,

red and gold in the final months

of this unfinished year,

they offer blazing riddles.

In the frozen fields of my life

there are no shortcuts to spring,

but stories of great birds in migration

carrying small ones on their backs,

predators flying next to warblers

they would, in a different season, eat.

Stunned by the astonishing mix in this uneasy world

that plunges in a single day from despair

to hope and back again, I commend my life

to Ruskin’s difficult duty of delight,

and to that most beautiful form of courage,

to be happy.

-- Jeanne Lohmann

Nothing Wants to Suffer

after Linda Hogan

Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind

as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff

being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want

to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it.

The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see

their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.

The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey.

These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth

to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,

made quickly, and without much suffering.

The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth.

A table, the weight of years of argument.

We know this, though we forget.

Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are.

Nor the worm, content in its windowless world

of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed.

The riverbed, gazing up at the stars.

Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy,

looking down at all of us— their offspring—

scattered so far beyond reach.

-- Danusha Lameris

“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.” 

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” 

The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1951), p. 474

Consecration

Even a song can be an altar,

a place to bring an offering—

as on this anxious day

when I can’t stop giving my heart

to love songs for the broken world.  

And perhaps the breath, too, is an altar

on which the song is placed,

which would mean what is sacred

might be ever flowing through us,

a space where we might meet the divine,

which is exactly what I believe.  

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Neighbors in October

All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon

with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting

chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.

Down the block we bend with the season:

shoes to polish for a big game,

storm windows to batten or patch.

And how like a field is the whole sky now

that the maples have shed their leaves, too.

It makes us believers—stationed in groups,

leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters

over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,

bagging gold for the cold days to come.

-- David Baker

From The Truth About Small Towns.

The Clearing

At the center of every fear

is a clearing, and though you must

trudge for miles in the dark woods

to get there, it’s worth the trip:

now you can sit down for a while

among grass and hawkweed, you can

bask in unfiltered light, and see

the heavy clouds shifting overhead.

At the center of every fear,

if felt completely, is an empty

space where the wind tickles

the hairs on your neck, then arcs

an arm around your shoulder,

pulling you closer like a father

at last unafraid to show affection,

here to let you know you’re not alone.

—James Crews

If you know your Creation story,

Then you know from where you have come

And you know where you are going

And what you were meant to become

You'll know how to love your partner

How to raise your babies to be women and men

who'll meet the purpose of their creation

And you can live your life so, too, you can.

If you know who you are, 

and what you must do

Then you’ll know what to say 

When your time is through,

When asked by the ones who have gone before, 

“Did you always love all of the people,

though they may never have loved you back?”

“Did you lift up the ones who had fallen?”

"Did you stand in the way of attack?"

“Did you help those to walk who had stumbled?”

"Did you help them to straighten their back?"

“Did you listen to stories they needed to tell?

...never judging their wrong from their right?“

"Did you make sure they knew you believed them?"

"And to see beyond darkness, some light?"

"Did you share with all those who had nothing?”

“Did you comfort those crying inside?”

“Did you listen to those who were angry?”

“Did you take away pain they were trying to hide?”

“Did you take care of all of Creation?”

“Did you keep it a beautiful place?”

“Did you love all the things that were put here?”

“On the earth, in the sky, and the water that flowed and helped nourish this place?

“Did you hold true to all of your teachings?”

“Were you the best Anishinaabe you could be?” 

"Step forward and tell us your answers

....the Ancestors are anxious to hear and to see.”

                       Mizanagiizhik

--Murray Sinclair

Hope Waits Inside

The day dawned as it always does,

milky light nuzzling the drapes

then leaking through the cracks like love

in a time of grief. I want to meet

this moment with arms swung wide open,

a gate that welcomes everything—

but dread rusts the hinges, and fear keeps

the latch from popping free. As usual,

I’m called to see hope where it seems

there is none, just as I must trust that

inside rain-slick, stripped-bare branches

wait the buds of new leaves, ready to

burst forth, like a happiness that doesn’t

depend on what happens.

—James Crews

Inviting Spaciousness

Today when the heart is a small, tight knot,

I do not try to untangle it. I don’t tug on the strings

in a desperate attempt to unravel it.

I don’t even wonder at how it got so snarled.

Instead, I imagine cradling it, cupping it

with my hands like something precious,

something wounded, a bird with a broken wing.

I cradle my heart like the frightened thing it is.

I imagine all the other frightened hearts

and imagine them all being held in love.

And I breathe. I breathe and feel

how the breathing invites a spaciousness.

I breathe and let myself be moved by the breathing

as I open and soften. Open and soften.

And nothing changes. And everything changes.

The heart, still a knot, remembers

it knows how to love. It knows it is not alone.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing

Now all the truth is out,

Be secret and take defeat

From any brazen throat,

For how can you compete,

Being honor bred, with one

Who were it proved he lies

Were neither shamed in his own

Nor in his neighbors' eyes;

Bred to a harder thing

Than Triumph, turn away

And like a laughing string

Whereon mad fingers play

Amid a place of stone,

Be secret and exult,

Because of all things known

That is most difficult.

-W.B. Yeats

When people say,

"we have made it

through worse before"

all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones

of those who did not make it, those who did not

survive to see the confetti fall from the sky, those who

did not live to watch the parade roll down the street.

I have grown accustomed to a lifetime of aphorisms

meant to assuage my fears, pithy sayings meant to

convey that everything ends up fine in the end. There is no

solace in rearranging language to make a different word

tell the same lie. Sometimes the moral arc of the universe

does not bend in a direction that will comfort us.

Sometimes it bends in ways we don't expect & there are

people who fall off in the process. Please, dear reader,

do not say I am hopeless, I believe there is a better future

to fight for, I simply accept the possibility that I may not

live to see it. I have grown weary of telling myself lies

that I might one day begin to believe. We are not all left

standing after the war has ended. Some of us have

become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.

- Clint Smith

Lumbricus terrestris (The Earthworm)

On a day when the world is weighty,

dark and dense with need,

I want to be the earthworm

that gives itself over to tunneling,

its every movement an act

of bringing spaciousness.

And when minutes feel crushed by urgency,

I want to meet the world wormlike,

which is to say grounded,

consistent, even slow.

No matter how desperate the situation,

the worm does not tunnel faster

nor burrow more.

It knows it can take decades

to build fine soil.

To whatever is compacted,

the worm offers its good worm work,

quietly bringing porosity

to what is trodden, compressed.

So often, in my rush to repair,

I end up exhausted.

Let my gift to the world be

my constancy, a devotion to openness,

my willingness to be with what is.

Let my gift to myself be patience

as I tend what is dense and dark.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, from THE UNFOLDING (Wildhouse Poetry, 2024)

Love Letter Sent Back in Time to Myself Three Years Ago

Your worst fears will happen,

will happen soon. And you

will crumple. Will wail.

Will not know how to say hello.

Will somehow remember

how to stand. How to open

a door. How to sit on a chair

and listen to the swallows,

the relentlessly sweet chickadees.

You will have no words, but you will have

your attention, your willingness,

your stubbornness, your

devotion to life.

Your heart, though wrecked,

will not be erased. It will beat,

will beat on, will beat on.

And though I do not understand

how this happens, you live.

You not only live, you’re remade,

just as rivers are remade by rain,

just as wind is refashioned

by the cool of the night. Just as

bones become stronger

after the break. Just as

a story resists The End.

Just as the notes of a song

can be reused to compose

a new song. Oh sweetheart,

you will not only sing

the new song—a song

equal parts haunting and beautiful—

you will be the new song

and the silence that holds it.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Only Love

Only love is big enough to hold all the pain of this world.

-Sharon Salzberg

And so I imagine the entire earth

as one beating heart held in the space

of this universe, inside a larger body

we can't fathom, filling with enough

love to lead each of us out of the cave

of our personal pain and into the light-

enough love to lead all humans as one

out of collective fear, rage, and hate

into a place of peace that is found only

within our own hearts, beating in sync

with the pulse of this planet we were

born to inhabit, despite the daily storms

which overtake us and make us forget

we are the lifeblood pumped into these

veins, every particle of love we generate

running into rivers, lakes, and creeks,

evaporating into the air we breathe,

give back, and breathe again.

--James Crews

Blessing for peace

As the fever of day calms towards twilight

May all that is strained in us come to ease.

We pray for all who suffered violence today,

May an unexpected serenity surprise them.

For those who risk their lives each day for peace,

May their hearts glimpse providence at the heart of history.

That those who make riches from violence and war

Might hear in their dreams the cries of the lost.

That we might see through our fear of each other

A new vision to heal our fatal attraction to aggression.

That those who enjoy the privilege of peace

Might not forget their tormented brothers and sisters.

That the wolf might lie down with the lamb,

That our swords be beaten into ploughshares

And no hurt or harm be done

Anywhere along the holy mountain.

--John O'Donohue

Useful

This is my one prayer,

one intention carried

in the clay of skin:

to be a useful cup

fired in the kiln of life.

Cracked as I am, shaped

by flawed but caring

human hands, let me hold 

what is mine to hold,

then give it back,

transformed by the keeping,

to anyone thirsty enough

to receive it.

--James Crews

Blessing in the chaos

To all that is chaotic

in you,

let there come silence.

Let there be

a calming

of the clamoring,

a stilling

of the voices that

have laid their claim

on you,

that have made their

home in you,

that go with you

even to the

holy places

but will not

let you rest,

will not let you

hear your life

with wholeness

or feel the grace

that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you

cease.

Let what divides you

cease.

Let there come an end

to what diminishes

and demeans,

and let depart

all that keeps you

in its cage.

Let there be

an opening

into the quiet

that lies beneath

the chaos,

where you find

the peace

you did not think

possible

and see what shimmers

within the storm.

—Jan Richardson

from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

These Mornings

All these mornings

are one morning;

over and over I am

greeted by the new day—

who greets me but

this Self that is your Self?

Beauty flows fresh,

mist and light glowing

in the valleys, brilliance

of gold breaking through

the leaves and branches

of the trees. All around

me the treasures of

the soul have gathered

as beings, as the created

newness of the World.

If I could ask for

any gift to be given

to us all,

over and over

it would simply be

This!

This!

This!

--Richard Wehrman

Because the Frost Is Late This Year

The nasturtiums have flourished enough

to escape their bed, and long, round

stems stretch down from the wooden

box and run between rows along the garden

paths, and it’s a freaking insurgence

of blooming, a mutiny of beauty, a

rebellion of splendor and my god if

I don’t just stand here in the paths, stunned

by the unlikely blessing, cursed with my

knowledge of how quickly it all can die, but

today, just look at it, today, I don’t even

try not to praise it, instead I stand in

the midst of improbable glory and fall

in love with all these gold and orange

petals and wide rounded leaves, barely

able to breathe past the ache of how all

we love will leave us—even the wildest

of blossomings, even the most unruly

of beauties, even what looks as if it’s

so alive it could take over the whole world.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

From a Country Overlooked

There are no creatures you cannot love.

A frog calling at God

From the moon-filled ditch

As you stand on the country road in the June night.

The sound is enough to make the stars weep

With happiness.

In the morning the landscape green

Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.

The day is carried across its hours

Without any effort by the shining insects

That are living their secret lives.

The space between the prairie horizons

Makes us ache with its beauty.

Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue

To the farthest cold dark in the universe.

The cottonwood also talks to you

Of breeze and speckled sunlight.

You are at home in these

great empty places

along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.

You are comfortable in this spot

so full of grace and being

that it sparkles like jewels

spilled on water.

-- Tom Hennen

From Darkness Sticks to Everything.

In the Community Garden

It's almost over now,

late summer's accomplishment,

and I can stand face to face

with this music,

eye to seed-paved eye

with the sunflowers' architecture:

such muscular leaves,

the thick stems' surge.

Though some are still

shiningly confident,

others can barely

hold their heads up;

their great leaves wrap the stalks

like lowered shields. This one

shrugs its shoulders;

this one's in a rush

to be nothing but form.

Even at their zenith,

you could see beneath the gold

the end they'd come to.

So what's the use of elegy?

If their work

is this skyrocket passage

through the world,

is it mine to lament them?

Do you think they'd want

to bloom forever?

It's the trajectory they desire—

believe me, they do

desire, you could say they are

one intent, finally,

to be this leaping

green, this bronze haze

bending down. How could they stand

apart from themselves

and regret their passing,

when they are a field

of lifting and bowing faces,

faces ringed in flames?

-- Mark Doty

Citizen Of Dark Times

Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.

When things go wrong, do right.

Set out by the half-light of the seeker.

For the well-lit problem begins to heal.

Learn tropism toward the difficult.

We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.

Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.

Prune back regret to let faith grow.

When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.

Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.

Keep seeing what you are not saying.

Plunder your reticence.

Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.

--Kim Stafford

From “The Case for Hope” by Rebecca Solnit

"The future is bigger than our imaginations. 

It’s unimaginable, and then it comes anyway. 

To meet it we need to keep going, 

to walk past what we can imagine. 

We need to be unstoppable. 

And here’s what it takes: 

you don’t stop walking to congratulate yourself; 

you don’t stop walking to wallow in despair; 

you don’t stop because your own life got too comfortable or too rough; 

you don’t stop because you won; 

you don’t stop because you lost. 

There’s more to win, more to lose, others who need you.

You don’t stop walking because there is no way forward. 

Of course there is no way. 

You walk the path into being, you make the way, 

and if you do it well, others can follow the route. 

You look backward to grasp the long history you’re moving forward from, 

the paths others have made, the road you came in on. 

You look forward to possibility. 

That’s what we mean by hope, 

and you look past it into the impossible 

and that doesn’t stop you either. 

But mostly you just walk, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. That’s what makes you unstoppable."

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes— 

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands—

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

--Louis MacNeice

Burning the old year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,

only the things I did’t do

crackle after the blazing dies.

 

--Naomi Shihab Nye