Tara Brach - The Courage to Say Yes - A Conversation with Tara and poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

I ran across acclaimed poet, Rosemerry Trommer, several years ago in a volume where she shares about the loss of her son, Finn, who took his life at age 16. I had never read anything on grieving that touched me so deeply, that held so much wisdom, such a deep affirmation of love. I went on to read her collection All the Honey, and now her new one, The Unfolding. These books are filled with Post-its: I didn't realize how much I needed Rosemerry's words to remind me of what most matters. In our interview we talk about the key themes in her poems: grief, love, opening to what's difficult and what's beautiful… saying yes to life.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. I must stay and welcome, friends. So, I am excited and really honored to be joined by my guest today who's a new friend and a poet, Rosemary Watola Traumaer, who has written 13 collections of poetry. won many prizes and honors for her work. She teaches and performs poetry and also as a storyteller. And she's been writing a poem a day since 2006.

Rosemary is also an organic fruit grower. Newspaper and magazine editor has done this in her ears, parent educator. So just to say personally, I was drawn to Rosemary's poetry several years ago. I found some pieces in a book on grief. And she was writing about the loss of her son Finn, who took his life at age 16. And I had never read anything on grieving that touched me so deep, you know, that held so much wisdom and was such a deep affirmation of love, really. So I went on to read her collection, All the Honey. and very differently than I read poems usually. I just read every single poem and all and over and over again.

I have post-its on most pages. I have my ears you can see it. Love it and and still read from it. Read it out loud to my husband before bed, something that we never do. He became a fan. So now Rosemary's come out with this new collection, the unfolding when I have immersed myself in this one. And you're going to get to hear some of the poems from it, but it really speaks of the power of saying yes to light, really loving without holding back. And so especially in these shadowy times, this book The Unfolding is really medicine, medicine for our hearts. So this is what we'll talk about. We'll talk about grief and love and opening to what's difficult, to what's beautiful,

saying yes, a lot. So Rosemary, welcome, my friend. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tara. This is, I'm full of joy, actually, to be here. Thank you. Yeah, it's lovely to get together. And so I thought I would start with questions about your life, really just going back, first of all, how come up home a day? And by the way, Rosemary sends them, People just receive a poem in their box each day. It's beautiful. So tell us about that. The practice, the daily writing practice began, like you said, in 2006.

It was kind of a dare. It was going to be just for 30 days. You know, write a poem a day for 30 days. My friend Jude Jordan Kalush was the one who issued this invitation. And she had just done it. And I remember thinking, no way. Like that I couldn't possibly do that. but she had suggested you find two other people, which I did,

and the promise is to send each other the poem every day. And we did do that for 30 days. And what I learned in those first 30 days, which was one of the most, you know, something that I needed to learn was that I couldn't write something good every day. This was something that I had, apparently it had been really important to me to write something good before that. And so, which meant I often didn't write at all.

So when I started writing every day and realized, oh, you can't write something good every day, I started to realize, well, then what am I doing? And it shifted the whole reason for writing and even maybe just the way I showed up at a piece of paper. And I thought, okay, could I write something true every day? And that I could do. So that was a really profound shift that happened really early in this daily practice. I mean, over the years, so many things have emerged. But that was the first one, and that was, for me, very exciting because it opened up,

it opened everything up about it as a practice. And it began changing the way I saw the world. And ultimately, you know, over the years, I've come to decide or to know that the poem itself is this byproduct and that the real practice is sitting with a blank. think and wondering what's here, what's true, what's the next true thing. So that's how the practice, I think if it weren't that, I couldn't have possibly continued, but that is infinitely sustainable. And sending it out into the world, that happened just like one person at a time, as people just kind of said, oh, could I get your poems too? It just started with two people and

three, four hundred thousand, just kept going. Okay, so I'm sitting with the words what you do doesn't have to be good, it has to be just true. And boy, if there was nothing else to take away from talking, I mean, that's just to know that and to know the practice is really that inquiry of what's true here right now. So thank you. That's awesome. And okay, so to bring it to Finn, age 16, taking his life and to weave that a bit with what unfolded for you in terms of the inner life of that and the poetry?

Because you've written so intimately. Like I've rarely experienced it like that. It must have served your spirit in some deep way to do that. Yes. So I think a couple of things come up. One is that I'm so grateful that I had a lot. daily practice before he died. Let's be clear that things were very difficult also before he died. Like it was, he had been in a lot of tumult and things were very difficult. And so I think that

meeting, meeting him, his life, my life with him, um, a poetic practice. Thank goodness, that was already in place just to already be meeting what was here. And, you know, to continue to be curious and now what? And now what? So that when he died, there was already in place this practice of wondering what's here. And I think that that, I don't think we can prepare ourselves. I'm not saying that. I don't think we can prepare ourselves for a traumatic incident. I do think that having a daily practice of showing up helped me to stay open in this really difficult time. I didn't write poems for the first seven weeks after he died.

And because honestly, Tar, I couldn't do, I mean, it was this state of where I didn't feel like I could do anything. I mean, I did do things, obviously, but there was no, it was more a realm of pure experience. I think I was also in some ways concerned. but that if I started writing about it too soon that I was taking myself out of experience and into interpretation, and I didn't, I didn't want to. I wanted to say in that pure, I say I wanted to, but I also think I didn't have a lot of choice about it too. If I felt like there was not a lot of agency to do much in that time, even though I wasn't writing poems, though, that practice of showing up

was what stayed with me. And I feel like I could kind of feel the poems come and leave. You know, I just kind of watch them arrive and let them go. And I think that the life is the poem, right? That's the living of our lives is the poem. And then the writing it down is recording that, I suppose. There's a creative, generative, glorious fun or pleasure, even when it's difficult subject.

matter, I suppose. But ultimately then, after 49 days, when I started writing again, it just rose up that it was, now it was time. Now it was time. So then I did. And I do think that one of the most beautiful gifts of using writing as a tool for meeting grief is that it helps me to see how different it is all the time. That it, in this moment, it's, you know, it's shut down. And in this moment, it's, you know, it's, it's ennerving and in this moment it's quiet and in this moment it's tumultuous and just to notice how much it changes from moment to moment from day to day and even now from year to year. And there's something powerful about that noticing how whatever is in this moment, it won't be in the next moment and I'm grateful for poetry,

really helping me to see that. Yeah, I mean, when you say that, I think of how many people I've been with and worked with that the real suffering was being locked into a sense that it's always going to be like this. This block of a future that's unlivable without the love that can carry us. So to be able to truly keep sensing the realness of change allows your body and mind to keep flowing and to keep discovering what you need. So that, yeah, thank you for that. That's helpful. I think that'll be helpful for anyone listening. One practical thing around that, if someone wanted to try this at home, it doesn't matter if you write poems or you don't write poems or you don't write. poems, you know, whatever your relationship is to writing. But one little, I guess, invitation I gave

myself every day multiple times sometimes was to fill in this blank. Today grief is. And then just let that little, just doing that, just noticing that that I could fill that blank in any way, today grief is a tree. And then notice, how is that true that it's a tree? Today grief is an eraser. How is it true that it's an eraser? Just kind of open. open up that way. But also today grief is, you know, overwhelming or today grief is, you know, like a friend or, you know, it was just beautiful, just that little piece. And if you just write it every day, you, you already have this little record of, of, and this invitation to see, oh, it's different. Oh, it's different again. Oh, it's different again.

Again, what I'm hearing from you is that it's not the writing itself as much as that it gives you a way to pay attention that keeps your life fresh and true. Yeah. And that inquiry is a really beautiful one. So when I first encountered you, there was something you shared in one of your somewhere, which is the phrase that I think a friend had shared with you about, when we lose them, then we're carrying their love light. Yeah.

And I just wanted to ask you to talk more about that. I'm so glad you brought this up. It was the day that Finn died, that we were in Georgia. We were helping my parents move into their home, their new home. And that evening, after he died, I was out walking, just I had to be moving outside. That was what felt right. And my friend Wendy Vidalek, who's also a beautiful poet,

had heard what happened. She called me and I answered. And as we were talking, she said to me, oh, love dove, he has given you his love light to carry. And in that very moment, Tara, a firefly lit up right in front of my face. right the moment she said light he has given you his love light to carry which felt magic in and of itself and in this moment of devastation to have something that felt wondrous and miraculous happen was already this small window into possibility into into knowing that at the same time

we can be absolutely devastated and still find wonder and love and love. And when she said that, when she said those words, it made me, I can't tell you, although I'm going to try, the feeling of love, relief, wonder, gratefulness that came through because it took the entire horror of it and created a potential for a legacy of love within it. And so it moved from shame or blamed into an invitation to grow ever deeper into love and to carry on all the love that he had. He did. He loved so much. So what a gift then to feel like that was my legacy to carry that love forward. and I try to live into that every day. I wish I could tell everyone those words.

You know, I wish that everybody had a Wendy who said to them, they have given you their love light to carry. Well, you're helping ripple those words, and your poems are an expression of what the truth of that is. There's something about when we lose someone, it's easier to sense their love light because we don't have the layers, scales of personality and all that stuff. It's just really true.

That's really true. Yeah. And if we could feel grief but also sense that, wow, so this is what's enlarged my awareness and infused it, you know, that this love light is more accessible, that I'm part of bringing it forward to the world. Like you, everyone could hear it because we all lose we all lose beings and okay well this feels like a good

moment i i shared with rosemary that i have way too many poems that i want her to read than possible like i'm very greedy to share her so that i'm speaking to know her listening but there's a poem uh warning label that really has to do with getting down so I was delighted you picked this one too, because I think that people might think, oh, you know, this unfolding is a book about grief, which there is a lot of grief in this book. In fact, I say in the introduction, you know, it's perhaps written in the key of grief, which is to say everything in it has been come from that place. And yet there's a lot of silliness and playfulness and

So I kind of love that you started with a poem that's a little silly and playful. And yet like Shel Silverstein, who was my first poetic hero, there's a dark underbelly in here somewhere. This is warning label. In the small print that doesn't appear on my wrist when you shake my hand, it says, not advised for those with low tolerance to weeping. It says, for those allergic to intimacy, low dosage recommended. It says, close contact is associated with a high risk of being included as a subject in poems. Oh, blah, blah, blah.

Everything comes with a warning label these days. So many potential risks when we connect like irrational happiness, like loss, like loss, like grief, like a deepening love that will never go away. I think I wanted it because there's that understanding that when we really are listening, there's a willingness to be changed forever. Like any contact that we really show up for, if we're present, is risky. It's vulnerable. and there, as you said, loss and love.

So here we are. And it's happening with us. I mean, I'm feeling it with us that we're new friends connecting. And, you know, it takes that sense of not trying to control things and not being certain about things. So, yeah. Wouldn't it be funny if we had warning labels on it? Like if we just walked around.

Danger, you might feel it's on. Raw from this time. Yeah, I love it. And I also think maybe because it brought it up in that poem and because I've already cried, I do want to just let everyone know that I don't mind crying. So please don't worry for me about tears coming. That's a natural part of rosemarying in the world. I have to say, I feel relieved when I cry. It's like, oh, okay, she's got a heart. art. I can get busy and numbed out. So yeah, it's a good thing. So I actually wanted to go right into a next poem if that's okay. And the one that I was hoping you'd read is toward peace because there's so much in what you teach and transmit that is in this poem.

All right. This is toward peace. Perhaps some part. of me still believes peace is a destination. A place we arrive, ideally together. I notice how shiny it is this belief, like a flower made of crystal, beautiful, but lifeless, devoid of the dust and scuff that come from living a real day. Meanwhile, there is this invitation to grow into peace the way real flowers grow from dirt into air with blight and drought, beetles, and hail. Meanwhile, this invitation to live in the tangle of fear and failure, to be humbled by my own inner wars and wonder how to find a living peace right here. The peace that arrives when we take just one.

one step through the mess toward compassion. And notice, as our foot rises, our heart also rises. And in that lifted moment, still scraping along in the dirt, there is a piece so real. We become light, become the momentum that is the change. So maybe, you know, before we were talking, before we started recording, about how we don't find that piece because we're so habituated to thinking how it is now isn't the way it's supposed to be. And I just was wondering if you'd say more about that because it feels so true and wise. Oh, yeah. I mean, I can get really caught up, especially when I know how good.

things can feel, how good it could feel to, you know, walk in the door to the house and, and, you know, and the dog and the cats come up and my husband and my daughter are you like, hi, you know, and I'm like, oh, that's what it's supposed to feel like. And then instead, I walk into the house and who knows where the cats are and my daughter's in her room and my husband, something's annoying him. And I'm like, this isn't, it's not supposed to be this way, you know, And then thinking something's wrong. This is where I get caught up, right? I think it's a problem that this is how I've walked in and this is how it is.

And now, should I fix it? Should I fix this problem? I think it's like that, you know, like this poem with this idea of peace and it's supposed to be beautiful and crystalline and perfect and we're going to arrive there and it's going to stay that way. And instead how messy it is and how it shows up, however it shows up and how it's this constant you know, getting to recalibrate the self to, oh, this is what's here. And I think more than anything, and this is probably more than anything what poetry has taught me is that it isn't this experience

itself. It is the way that I meet this experience. And just coming back again and again and again to that. Oh, it's how, you know, so that I meet this, today I'm meeting peace and it's this, this crystal rose, you know, but then I get to come back and I'm like, okay, today pieces, and this is how metaphor helps us, right? So I say, okay, today piece is, you know, is the field. And then I get to wonder about how is that true. And this brings in this constant sense of curiosity and wonder and the ability to see past what I thought it was supposed to be, say, oh, yeah, what else could it be? And what else? And what else? And what else? It's just that sometimes we land in a place and we're like, oh, it's really comfy there. So it's nice to have. It's nice to

hang out in that space for a while. It's such true that the two big forces are trying to hold on to what we, this is the way it should be, are trying to get somewhere else. And it's so deep in our psyche, as you just described it, when it's not the way we expect it to think something's wrong. I mean, last night, I was lying awake, couldn't sleep. And so I said, okay, just presence, presence. But I had a stomach ache.

And I said, well, this isn't the way it's, but, you know, it's like, I'm not going to be able to be present now. This is, you know, my stomach hurts. And then some part of me said, wait a minute, you know, this too, start right where you are. You know, that whole, from mud to lotus, it's like, be with how it is. And, but how many moments do we wait for the stomach ache to go away? Are we wait, because it's raining out, for it to be nice again, so, so called nice. Right. whatever it is. And often I also notice, like you said, we have this idea of peace, our freedom or whatever it is in the spiritual realm. And sometimes it feels like trying to get to peace,

it's like we're in this motorboat like looking for a quiet spot. And each moment we're stirring at more waves, trying to get somewhere different. That's a great metaphor. Yeah. And it's just, can we stop? stop. Can we really stop? And it's radical, but just open to life just as it is. So I just found that poem really, really powerful, because in the moments that we do that, the way you described it, let the messiness, then there's this tenderness, this stepping towards compassion, and in that tender presence, everything we wanted is already there. I have been thinking about exactly that so much lately, Tara, just as the tenderness and how that tenderness, how that self-compassion

seems to me more and more just to be at the heart of everything. It just seems like when that tenderness and gentleness toward the self is in place, it really does feel like everything is possible then. And it just continues to show up. for me in the most beautiful ways. I'm like, oh, here it is again. Every time it's like, you know, opening a package and being like, yay, look. But I do feel like the more I learn it, the more I trust it, the more I trust it, the more fluent it becomes, the more natural it becomes, yeah, how grateful I am for that. Actually, it's there. The love is there towards ourselves and others, but it's not our habit. And so it really,

take, it's like what you said, the more you practice it, it becomes stronger. And you wrote a poem, I'm going to skip ahead here. I was going to ask you to read this later, but this is the right time. So you wrote a poem called Self-compassion. So if you can find that one, it's just so good. There it is. Self-compassion. It's like the scent of rain after a month of drought. The way It rises up and fills the lungs, quiets the body and gentles the mind. That's what it's like when, after grasping and spinning and reaching and clenching,

at last, exhausted with my own fear, I lay my hand on my own heart and see through my thoughts and practice loving what is beneath my palm. This frightened woman and the life that lives through her. Not a single promise I will be safe. But when I press my open hand into the beat of my anxious heart,

what was dry becomes loamy. What was cracked becomes rich and a faint sweetness tendrils through me like incense, soothing as a lullaby that opens in the dark. dark. I'm thinking, Tara, especially now, of right after Finn died and how much self-compassion and love were a part of that time and how quickly that became apparent to me that that gentleness to myself was was a starting place. Actually, there's a poem in all the honey

that talks about it. Do you mind if I read that too? I'm taking us out of sequence and now it's going to take me a moment to find it too. But it was so important and it's so along the lines of what we've been talking about, this framework of how we think we're seeing the world and then how the world shifts for us

and were so surprised by, oh, this is what's here. And this was two nights after he died, and I was in a, well, in a hotel, I suppose, not sleeping. And this poem is called The Invitation. Two nights after he died, all night, I heard the same one-line story on repeat. I am the woman whose son took his life. The words felt full of self-pigestion.

filled me with hopelessness, doom. And then a voice came, a woman's voice, just before dawn, and it gave me a new shade of truth. I am the woman who learns how to love him now that he is gone. It did not change the facts, but it changed everything about how I met the facts. Over a hundred days later, over three years later, I am still learning what it means to love him, how love is an ocean, a wildfire, a crumb,

how commitment to love changes me. It changes everyone, invites us to bring our best. Love is wine, is trampoline, is an infinite song with a chorus in which I am sung. I am the woman who learns how to love him now that he is gone. May I always be learning how to love. like a cave, like a rough-legged hawk, like a son. That invitation then to turn toward love, I'm the woman who learns how to love him now that he's gone.

That invitation to compassion, right? To self-compassion, to compassion for him, compassion for the world. like that early turning toward love, you know, started by Wendy. He's given you his love light to carry and many other experiences that we're not talking about. But I just was so aware of how important that self-compassion piece was and how it allowed for this profound shift of what was possible, I suppose, in showing up with grief. Totally resonates.

for me in any moment feeling the palm here or even just remembering that it's my intention to be kind. Like even this moment, just saying that, there's a bit of a melting of some armoring I didn't even know was there or some casing I didn't know was there. Yeah. So it's almost like the loving is here, but the habit is to be tense to to be tensed in a way that we can't feel it and the self-compassion just softens that. And one of the things I run into for many people, people might be listening to us Rosemary and think,

well, I just wish I could access self-compassion, but, you know, I'm so turned on myself, I'm so war with myself, you know, I don't feel it. I just feel, you know, disgust or shame or, you know. And so I'm just wondering, are there times you feel cut off? and you have to find your way back to the hand on the heart? Oh, gosh. I mean, every how many times a day? How many times a day?

All right. Understood. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I think what I've noticed, really, I've noticed just even in the last year, this more profound shit, this kind of sweeter voice that's come in.

It's like, you know, oh, sweetheart, that's what it's usually. oh, sweetheart, that's usually the, and I'd say that it's also more tone. Like sometimes it's the same words that it's in my head, right? The same words, just a different tone that I hear them in, you know, like, oh, really, that's what's happening, you know. And then I hear it this way, oh, really? That's what's happening.

You, there's just this, it's not just this, this, these words of, oh, sweetheart, but just this tone that's more generous, more gentle. And I notice it. I think that the more I, that I'm capable of that, the more the other voice hurts, the more I notice the other voice. Like, I'm like, oh, wow, there's that voice. So there's this kind of turning toward it. I think because it, it's easier to see through it, the more.

I have this other awareness. But no, of course, I still hear this other voice comes in and like, it's usually it's supposed to be different, you know. It was supposed to be like this. You know, it's often where that voice starts, you know, and then, oh, hello. Oh, hello. That's actually the word that I use for myself all the time. Oh, hello.

Oh, hello. I just say that all the time, like greeting that part, you know. instead of pushing it away, instead of vilifying that part, right, that's angry or whatever, it just say, oh, hello. Yeah. Well, these are what you're describing are super wise ways of being in relationship with what's going on. And what you're really sharing is mindfulness. You know, if you can be aware of the voice that comes from an old narrative from a

contractive place, if you can notice it, you don't have to believe it as much. Yeah. and then you can access, as you said, a different tone. Sometimes when I'm working with people or working with myself, I'll just say something, I'll say something that's the right thing, but then I'll say it again five times until I get sincere. Right. And I'll just say, wait until you get sincere,

so your body feels it. So it's not just mental. It's come in to my body. And for one woman I was with just recently, she was really cut off from being able to have any tone, any voice, it didn't feel accessible. What she could do was pray to feel self-compassion. And then she was sincere. So she couldn't feel it, but she could say, please, may I feel self-compassion?

In those moments, actually she had reconnected with her own love light, with tenderness and truth. So there's always a way home. Doesn't that sound like when we start at the beginning, you know, like there's the one thing that's good. Like you're supposed to love yourself that's being good. But if the truth is, please, please help me to love myself. Right. I just, I noticed this in writing poems too is that the moment that I can say something true, right? Like, please help me love myself because I don't right now. But to say, please let me live myself, then it's like it's a full body relaxation that happens in that moment. There's like, in fact, the first poem in the book, you know, I call it the self-portrait as a tuning fork.

There's this kind of full body resonance that happens in those moments just because we said the truth because I don't feel loving right now, but please let me feel loving. And that is, that's so exciting, right? That's so exciting. And I noticed too in poems that when kind of going back to your question of, what do you, what do you do when you notice you're in this other place? how do you start to notice you're in this other place? I do think that writing helps us to notice we're in that place.

And I also notice that often what I'll do, and I'm writing, I end up writing part of it in first person and part of it in third person. There's the part of it that's having an experience and the part of it that's able to watch her or have her experience. And this witnessing part has almost always a lot more clarity than the human having the experience. So the poem itself allows for this kind of conversation between ourselves as the hero and ourselves as the narrator. Which is really, really a powerful tool.

I mean, some people will write a letter or write something from their wounded, hurting, shame-filled sense of self to whatever they perceive as the beloved, you know, their high self or some other. And then they'll write back from the beloved from a deeper place of wisdom and truth. So I think what we're getting at is that we need to get have a way to enlarge beyond the stuck hurting wounded ego place and that these ways of writing and dialoguing with and expressing actually wake us up to something larger. Yeah. And prayer. I'm a believer.

I'm a believer because it sounds religious, but what it really is is just embody. and expressing the longing and the loving that's already there. And in the moment of sincere prayer, I feel so porous, it's that it breaks down any separation from the rest of the universe. When it's really, really tender, the universe can flow through us. So it's a very powerful way of reconnecting. Oh, yeah. I have several friends right now who are really here.

interested in one's doing a book on and one's doing exploration in poetry is prayer and i think that so often they do have this intersection which is i suppose that just that longing to connect with what's most true truth of it yeah you have a poem um love like water and we've been talking about the power of love to dissolve so it's just this one fits It's really well right now. Where it is. So this one, even so I wasn't writing in those first, you know, seven weeks after he died, I did come back and write about some of those experiences.

And this poem is really trying to touch one of those early experiences right after Finn died. Love, like water. We could say the pain was a block. so great it could not be moved. We could say love did not try to move it. Love simply surrounded the mass and dissolved it. The way water meets a block of salt, breaking apart each ionic bond until every atom of sodium and chloride

is surrounded by molecules of water. And in this way, And sooner than you'd think, the pain was rearranged into minuscule bits, and there was no part of the pain that was not touched by love. The pain was no less, it's true, but, mixed with love, dispersed, the pain became something new, something vital that encouraged a different kind of life, a substance that supported buoyancy, an essential medium to carry me.

I really remember this feeling it was so visceral, Tara, where I really was aware of like every single molecule, if pain were a substance, it was as if every single molecule of it. got surrounded by love so that so that it was like the poem says it was no less it was no less pain it hurt no less but but having all of that love contacted um made it bearable and and even something you know because it was now love and pain it was like saltwater something that carries us i i felt so aware of being carried by love to this day, to this day, although at the time, I think I couldn't

imagine being alive without that. And I remember there was this, there was a moment where I was aware of how much love was coming toward me. And I remember thinking, that is way too much. That is way too much love. And I, and then I imagine just one person stopping. And I was like, nope, nope, actually I need it all. I need all of that. That way too much love is exactly how much it's going to take. But there was also this interesting thing where people would say something like, if I could, I would take your pain from you if I could. And I remember thinking, don't you dare. Don't you dare take any of this? I understood their goodwill. I wasn't angry with them. I just mean, it was it was I didn't want the difference I didn't want to shut down the experience that was

I didn't want to not feel everything that I was feeling and I didn't want to take away that enormous loss of losing my son there was no way I wanted to pretend it was any less than it was I wanted to know it how how big it was now It's like the only refuge is reality. Yeah. And our habit is to pull away from pain, pull away from fear. The only place that there's the kind of transmutation you talked about, I mean, that's just a word, but is when we meet reality, meet what's here with loving awareness. Yes.

And I do, I really can relate. It's almost, I sometimes imagine an ice cube. floating in water and that the water itself is melting the ice cube back into it, but the body is more infused than ever with loving presence. And I practice a lot with fear that way, because I'll never forget decades ago, someone just said, try loving the fear. And that felt impossible because fear seems to preclude love. But there's a way that we can have a willingness to explore that that opens us, opens awareness into the fear that it's as you described. It ceases to be how it was.

It begins to, in some way, dissolve and become something different. It becomes life-loving life. Oh, that's beautiful. It becomes life-loving life. Because it was protecting life, but the clench of protecting when met by awareness and love starts relaxing. The ice cube starts dissolving and then it becomes the energy, like you describe, the salt and the water, the buoyancy, it becomes life-loving life. But the only way through is through, we both know it. It's just how to wake up from that habit of wanting to pull away. I mean,

I'm remembering I was in a hospital once when I was really sick and we didn't know what was wrong. And so I had a lot of fear about losing my body, but more I was focused on losing my way of teaching and living. And I remember at one point hearing, remembering the words of one teacher who said, meet your edge and soften, you know, soften with that tenderness. And that was my mantra, you know, meet your edge and soften. And it didn't soften right away into that vast ocean of loving present, it softened into grief under my fearless grief. But then, as you will know, by presencing with grief, we find what grief is sourced in, which is love. So it's our way home. And it just becomes more of a leaning towards in the way

that you write. It's so beautiful, just to meet it with love. And I really hear in the story you're telling, too, just this little echo of what you were saying about the woman who prayed to be able to find love for herself, you know, because it wasn't there, but the prayer for it was. And how do I meet fear with love? Is it possible to love fear? And it sounds like you came up with that same kind of, can, okay, can I love this fear? Is that a possibility? Help me love this fear. Yes, yes, just the help me. And because you write beautifully in other poems that we can't will things, we're not the doer, but there's a quality of willingness that creates an atmosphere. And we can choose how we pay attention some, even though there's no real self-chewing, the choosing can happen. So I want to jump to something a little bit of a different energy.

because I don't want to miss it. And it's wilding. It's towards the beginning of your book. All right. This is, oh, maybe some of you too who are listening. And maybe you too, Tara, I don't know, are also people who love getting in really cold water. Where I live in the mountains, I have lots of opportunities to jump into high alpine lakes. And this is this one I wrote after my friend Corinne and I had.

been for a hike. Wilding. It is always near freezing, this high alpine lake where we slide into oddly blue water and bare strangled sounds tear from our throats as if our own wildness is shredding through manicured versions of self. I crave it, this scraping away of everything that isn't limb thrash and lung gasp and skin scream and heart bang and wild uncontrollable breathing crave the tingling after the feral laughter the way the world slips more deeply into us when we dare to slip more deeply into the world okay so i love cold showers And I took an extra long one this morning because I knew I was going to ask you about wilding. And I thought, yeah, I crave that to slip more into the world and have it slip more.

Let's be clear, I also love warm water. You know, there's nothing wrong with liking. I mean, I love that too. I could probably write a poem about how lovely that is too. But, you know, it's the olive of it, right? It's the olive. Yeah. I think what drew me to this, because, you know, even for a person who I have friends who just cannot imagine why I would ever go into cold water, it's really in a deep way about taking a risk to live more.

You know, there's that saying that if a snake cannot shed its skin, it perishes, that we have to have ways of letting ourselves be more exposed. more raw, more vulnerable. And we have to do it on purpose, like jumping into that alpine lake on some level because our habit is to seek comfort and safety. So we're kind of undoing the comfort habit. No, is that something you find? Oh, that's totally it.

That is exactly it. I resonate so completely with what you're saying. And I think, again, this is where the willingness comes in, this willingness to shed that skin, like you say. that's another great metaphor. Or, you know, I think here it was the Alpine Lake, but I think we could say that it's true for any kind of circumstance where, you know, like you with meeting fear.

And there you are and you're afraid and you have, how do we shed that skin that says that fear is bad, you know, and open up into all that's here? Yeah, that just feels so, so true. Or get real with another person. just to get real with another person to show up naked with I mean literally not well sure literally but I'm speaking metaphorically of what is it to show up as a you know with this few veils on with as few masks on as possible exactly and then how we come to crave that then how how

glorious that is you know like I think maybe it takes just the first time you know oh but you know it yeah that's scary and so wonderful. You know, there's the paradox of it. And so, it's so true. We start to love feeling fully alive more than we want to protect ourselves. That's it.

That's it. To love feeling fully alive more than we love the protection. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes we get forced into it. I mean, you got, you got the rug pulled in the most horrific way.

And so sometimes it happens spontaneously. that we're forced into the wilderness and there's just nothing that we can wear to cover ourselves. And when that happens, the best we can do is, as you said, just keep trying to love ourselves into healing and be there for life as it is. But I think what I loved about this poem was that sometimes it's part of waking up to choose to go towards those experiences. to play our edge, you know, it's, Mark Nippo calls it the exquisite risk, you know, because it's exquisite because it's so beautiful and gratifying, but it's a risk because it's edgy. Yeah.

Yeah, there it is. That's a beautiful phrase. Thanks, Mark Nipo. Yeah. Oh, my, there's so much. I'm just torn here because I have these different poems I want to. Okay. I'm in a sacred round.

This is almost the last poem. Oh, it is the last poem. It's the last poem in the book. And I'll say that the book itself, too, by the way, it's an invisible thing that's inside the book, but it follows the 11 powers of the universe as identified by cosmologist Brian Swim. The first being seamlessness.

And the last is radiance. and this poem to me kind of embodies that radiance power of the universe. Sacred ground. And if, as I now know, the closet is sacred and the bare room is sacred, and the sidewalk and classroom and the ER are sacred, then I trip into the teaching that everywhere is sacred, not only the church, but the alley, not only the mosque, but the bench, not only the places in candlelight where the air is pungent

and woody with myrr. I want to worship at the shrine of everywhere. Want to know every inch of this earth as an altar, every walk a pilgrimage, every step, a step from holy to holy to holy. Thank you. I can't imagine a practice that would bring alive our world more to us than, I mean, so often we feel like we're on our way somewhere. And that this that we're passing through doesn't matter, this neighborhood. And we miss so many moments. It's like we're racing across the surface of life to get to the finish line, death, and never dropping in. And so you're giving us a beautiful invitation. I do think this is the invitation of poetry, by the way. I do feel like that one of the invitations of a poem is to,

is to wherever we are in whatever we're doing with whoever we're with, the opportunity to wonder what's here. And I think every time we do that, it's just a matter of remembering to do that. But every time we do, we are struck with the. radiance of something in this moment. There's no way to not see it once we open up to seeing it. It's just, but it's that, it's that moment of wanting to see. It's that moment of wanting to see, which is, you know, how much of our life is, is shut down. You know, this gorgeous tree at the

top of my drive. How often do I see it? Every other week, maybe, right? Like I drive right past it all the time, all the time. And yet, all it takes is me wondering what's here. And There it is. You know, and like you say, what neighborhood do we go to? What, you know, dump do we go to? What place do we go to where we're like, this couldn't possibly be a holy place? And then the invitation to find that it is. Well, that's what I love reading your poems is I get inspired to move through my day differently with a poet's eyes.

that brings it alive. It's like my husband and I have this kind of ritual we do when we're out together walking and we'll stop and we'll just feel the moment and one of us will say, well, this is it, meaning this is it. This is the whole universe, right? This moment. And then the other will go, no, no, no, this is it. But it's really that, that we so rarely feel like now is it this moment right here is as precious as any moment in the whole world it's like Thomas Merton says you know that everything is just illuminated with the divine and this is not a nice story this is truth I felt my shoulders go down when you said that I want to actually have a different final poem. I mean, that's a, can't lose on that one, but I just want to share you with

the world. So because as a final poem for us, if you are willing. All right. Yeah, I guess the only thing to say about this is maybe, maybe you've felt this way too, because so I can't save the world. Can't save even myself. Can't wrap my arms around every frightened child, can't foster peace among nations, can't bring love to all who feel unlovable. So I practice opening my heart right here in this room and being gentle with my insufficiency. I practice walking down the street heart first. And if it is insufficient to share love, I will.

will practice loving anyway. I want to converse about truth, about trust. I want to invite compassion into every interaction. One willing heart can't stop a war. One willing heart can't feed all the hungry. And sometimes, daunted by a task too big, I ask myself what's the use of trying. But today, the invitation

is clear to be ridiculously courageous in love. To open the heart like a lilac in May, knowing freeze as possible, and opening anyway, to take love seriously, to give love wildly, to race up to the world as if I were a puppy, adoring and unjaded,

stumbling on my own exuberance, to feel the shock of indifference, of anger, of cruelty, of fear, and stay open, to love as if it matters, as if the world depends on it. Oh, to be that puppy. You and me both, those were the lines I wrote down, race up to the world as if I were a puppy, adoring an unjointed. Yeah. So I love those as final words to love as if it matters because the world does depend on it. And your poems invite forward loving. They're just part of having the ripple in our world of loving. So for all of you are listening and thank you for listening, I want to invite you to order it now.

if you don't mind holding up the book, I don't have it here. It'll probably arrive at your house this afternoon. I'm kind of electronic, but it's so amazing. I mean, I had so many poems that I wanted Rosemary to read. We need the soul nourishment of poetry, and this is, get it as a gift for friends as well. This is an amazing book. So Rosemary, a bow of thanks or all that you are, all that you bring. Thank you, Tara. Thank you. Thanks for this conversation.