Hush

Rosemerry's poetry speaks to our hearts, to our deepest knowing, to being here in each moment. She wakes us up again and again and reminds us that the sacred is right in front of us-in the night sky, in the moist earth, in the leaf at our feet. To be awake in this moment is our deepest potential; these poems bring us here with reverence and joy. Like all great teachers, Rosemerry points the way so clearly that we arrive, having forgotten the finger, and seeing only the moon.

-Susie Harrington, meditation teacher, Desert Dharma

With Hush, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer once again turns her attention toward insights gleaned from daily life, trusting that everything we encounter, from evergreens and bluebonnets to snapdragons and an achy back after shoveling snow, has something to teach us about being human. Throughout each of these exquisite, open-hearted, often sensual poems, she brings us along as she finds a kind of "renegade beauty" wherever she looks. "Let's go outside," she writes, "and praise/the light till the light is gone, and then praise the dark," modeling for us just the kind of radical gratitude we need in our literature, and in our lives right now.

--James Crews, editor of Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection

These are not quiet poems-they are forthright meditations on truth and courage, love and loss. They are life itself, revealed with compassion and grace. The poems in Hush speak like a healing meditation, a reminder of the beauty and sustenance in living with hearts and minds open.

-Susan J. Tweit, plant biologist and author of Walking Nature Home

In these quietly rendered poems, we are invited into the garden, and further into the wilderness-and find ourselves giving praise for that which is mud smudged and lumpy, for the sincerity of wild strawberries, and for the onslaught, which every gardener knows. Here Rosemerry shows us how one might endeavor to be the peace we want in the world. One comes away remembering that tending is at the heart of all healing. Because thorn bush. Because great blue heron. Because puddles.

-Wendy Videlock, author of Nevertheless

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's poetry has appeared in O Magazine, TEDx, in back alleys, on A Prairie Home Companion and on river rocks she leaves around town. Her poems have been described as "a deep oasis for all who seek to experience the sacred in every moment." Her most recent collection, Naked for Tea, was a finalist for the Able Muse Poetry Prize. Other recent books include Even Now, The Miracle Already Happening and The Less I Hold. She's included in the acclaimed anthology, Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, and leads mindfulness poetry discussion groups.

She served as San Miguel County's first poet laureate and as Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and was a finalist for Colorado Poet Laureate (2019). Since 2006, she's written a poem a day. Favorite themes in her poems include parenting, gardening, the natural world, love, thriving/failure and daily life. She's performed and taught poetry for Think 360, Craig Hospital, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Weehawken Arts, Camp Coca Cola, meditation retreats (with Susie Harrington), 12-step recovery programs, hospice, Deepak Chopra, Shyft, and many other organizations.

She is the co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process (with Christie Aschwanden), co-host of the Talking Gourds Poetry Club (with Art Goodtimes), and co-leader of Secret Agents of Change (with Sherry Richert Belul). Though she earned an MA in English Language & Linguistics at UW-Madison, she still can't effectively pair socks.

Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.