A Daily Dose of Poetry

A Hundred Falling Veils

• Blessing for Those Who Are Willing to Be Vulnerable June 9, 2026
                    with gratefulness for all the bees  When you are soft, when you lay bareyour innerness and unfold your layersfor the world like a voluptuous, purplingO’Keefe iris, it is true, there will be some so threatened by your opening they will attack, will sow fear and hatred into the warm fieldof the gentle night. When it happens, may you be […]
  Rosemerry
• The Making June 8, 2026
  for Kayleen Asbo  In those days when I was terribly raw,my friend would make mandalasout of petals and sticks, pinecones and rocks, sometimes shells, sometimes leaves.She’d send a photo and a noteto say she was thinking of me. I still marvel at how, of the thousands of choices she made on any given day, she chose to spend time sending […]
  Rosemerry
• No Detail Too Small  June 7, 2026
   The weather changes the beans, Svetlana tells me as we sit in her home.I sip the coffee she’s made me, a blend she and her partner createdfrom five different beans that they roastthemselves. She can taste in her cupwhether the growing season was rainy or dry. Everything changes everything. No detail too small to link us to the worldof […]
  Rosemerry
• The Arrival June 6, 2026
  After I drove six hours she welcomed me at the doorof her homewith a pair of slippersand a glass of water—there are many languagesI want to learn to speak fluently. Kindness, most of all.   
  Rosemerry
• The Elephant in the Room June 5, 2026
                          for Karen Chamberlain  I carry it with me everywhere, this small wooden elephantthat sat for years on the writing deskof my friend, a late-night writer,a peach jam maker, lover of poets.I have seen the way it makes shy mensmile when they hold it in their palms.I have heard the voices of women break openas they share the […]
  Rosemerry
• The Conversation June 4, 2026
    I was sitting beside my mother on the couch,knitting a blanket for my girl. My mother heldthe yarn in her lap, a cloud of muted pinks. Outside, the tall dry grasses weaved in golden evening light. A Western Warbling Vireo rambled on in its jumbled, warbly way. Mom spoke of her plans for dinner the next nightand I knit […]
  Rosemerry
• Watching My Mother Pull Bindweed June 3, 2026
    With a white plastic five-gallon bucketas a stool, she sits in the middleof my garden’s gravel path and wrestlesthe long notched rod through the stones.She moves her arm slowly, her back hunched over her task.I see in her body her father’s body,how he, too, would toil in the gardensof others for hours, tool in hand, patientand […]
  Rosemerry
• While Transplanting Calendula June 2, 2026
   How gently I move the volunteer sproutsout of the potato bed and into another row,careful to gather the fragile roots with a bitof damp dirt, tamping lightly around the slender stem.How fragile it all can be. I think of how tenderlythis morning my husband touched my face,as if too well aware of how a single […]
  Rosemerry
• Sometimes When You Don’t Know What to Say June 1, 2026
    It’s because to try to describe this feeling is to render it instantly dull, flat. It’s like when you see a rock on the bottomof the river—all shimmering and bright—but the moment you bring it to the airto share it, what seemed precious becomes cloudy, mundane, a dumb lump,the stuff of filler in a suburban parking lot. And so […]
  Rosemerry
• Not the Worst May 31, 2026
    Sometimes the worst doesn’t happen.   The flash flood doesn’t flow through the first floor     of your home. The bear doesn’t tear into your tent.      But sometimes the train comes around a bend,    hits a rockfall and comes off the track. Sometimes  the rocket explodes in roiling orange fireball of methane fuel.Sometimes the car launches from the highway into the air   and […]
  Rosemerry