Episode 31 Bonus: Three poems from Rosemerry about moving into the new year

For Auld Lang Syne

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet,

says the song, and I would give you

the cup, friend, would fill it

with whiskey or water or whatever

would best meet your thirst.

I fill it with the terrifying beauty

of tonight’s bonfire—giant licks

of red and swirls of blue that consume

what is dead and melt the ice

and give warmth to what is here.

I fill it with moonrise and snow crystal

and the silver river song beneath the ice.

With the boom of fireworks and with laughter

that persists through tears. With

Lilac Wine and Over the Rainbow and Fever.

I toast you with all the poems we’ve yet to write

and all the tears we’ve yet to weep,

I hold the cup to your lips,

this chalice of kindness, we’ll drink it yet,

though the days are cold, the nights so long.

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

 ____

The Next Storm Comes

And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.

         —Meister Eckhart

And suddenly you know it’s time

to shovel the drive. For though snow

still falls, at this moment it’s only

three inches deep and you can still push it easily

with your two wide yellow shovels.

Yes, it’s time to start something new—

though it doesn’t feel new, this

shoving snow from one place to another.

In fact, your shoulders still feel

the efforts of yesterday.

But with each push of the shovels,

the path on the drive is new again. At least

it’s new for a moment, new until snow

fills it in. Then it’s a different kind of new.

How many beginnings are like this?

They don’t feel like beginnings at all?

Or we miss their newness?

Or they feel new only for a moment

before they’ve lost their freshness?

There is magic in beginnings, says Meister Eckhart,

and sometimes we see beginnings all around us,

a new path, a new promise, a new meal.

A new prayer. New snow fall. A new song.

Is it too grand to call it magic, this new calendar year?

Too grand to call it magic, this momentary

clearing on the drive? Too grand to be magic,

this momentary clearing in my thoughts?

Or is it exactly, perhaps, what magic is—

something we allow ourselves to believe,

despite logic, despite reason, something that brings

us great pleasure, makes us question

what we thought we knew, our sense

of what is possible changed.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

_____

Watching The Wizard of Oz on New Year’s Eve, I Think of a Resolution toward Peace

As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.

—The Wizard to the Tin Man, The Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum

Give us hearts that break

when we see how cruel the world can be

and hands that extend toward others.

Give us eyes that weep when we feel

the beauty of home, and

lips to speak love, to apologize.

Give us courage to say what must be said

and ears to hear what we’d rather not hear

and eyes that will not turn the other way

from anyone in need.

Give us brains that are wired

for helpfulness, compassion

and curiosity. Yes, let us ask for hearts

that break and break and grow

bigger in the breaking. Let us

love more than we think we can love.

And the cup of kindness, may we

ever remember to drink of it,

let us share it with each other.

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

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