SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome everybody again to End of Life Conversations. You know, I I found this to be true, and probably you have to. Sometimes it's just so hard to find the right words to express our loss and our grief and even the joy and all the different feelings that come up when someone when we lose someone or something changes in our life. And we love going back to poets. Yes, we do. I think some of our favorite episodes have been with poets. And um and this time is no expression is no exception because we got to meet Rosemary Whitola Tromer, uh, an incredibly passionate and beautiful and lovely person. And we just enjoyed so much. She read many, many poems during the uh episode, and you will, I'm sure, be uh equally uh enthusiastic and and just knocked over by the beautiful poetry.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

So yes, I would say mesmerized. I think she started with a with a Mark Nepo piece. It's um that we discover that falling in the canyon is our initiation. And for a lot of us, when we go through a death, through a loss, through an end of something, uh, it feels as though that is the end of life in of itself. And yet, you know, with a good poet laureate, with a good wordsmith at your side, you can both discover there's no words that you will ever come close to expressing what you feel, and you will find more words in its multitude of ways that you can form them to actually express what it is that you're feeling. And this is no exception. Rosemary will tell us about the time when her son ended his life and the poetry that came out of that time. And I really valued this time with her. And I'm hoping that some of you who are really in that space right now, in that canyon of the initiation, will just hold her words as a life raft through to get through this because she is an exceptional wordsmith and human being.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yeah, please stay tuned.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

And she shares her gifts about how to do that yourself. So, yeah, stay tuned. You're gonna enjoy it, I promise. Yes, take care.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Welcome everyone to this episode of End of Life Conversations. I am the Reverend Mother Ana Luisa Armandares, and today we are delighted to spend time with Rosemary Watola Tromer. Rosemary is a poet, teacher, speaker, writing facilitator, and poet laureate of Evermore. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, Washington Post Book Club, and Carnegie Hall Stage. Her newest book is The Wonderment, newest album, Risking Love, and the one-word mantra, Adjust.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

I love that. That's beautiful. Um and I am the Reverend Wakill David Matthews. Rosemary lives with her family on the banks of the wild San Miguel in Colorado. She co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process, which we hope we get to be guests on someday. And um, her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. As Poet Laureate for Evermore, we want to learn more about that, by the way. She helps others explore grief and love through poetry. Since 2006, she's written a daily poem, sharing them on a hundred falling bales. Our friend and former guest Moody Sveti introduced us, and we're so happy you could join us today. Yes. And um, and we want to spend most of this time enjoying your poetry, so we won't spend a lot of time with questions, but we do have a few questions we'll toss in here now and then.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Um, would you like to start with a poem, or you want to jump into like how you got here?

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Sure, why not? Yeah. Let's start with a poem.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah, why not? All right. Well, you you gave us a list, but pick whenever whatever one you'd like.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

This wasn't even on the list, but uh perfect. Here's one called um after I fell in the canyon of grief. And it begins with a quote from Mark Nepo. He says, We discover that falling in the canyon is our initiation. After I fell in the canyon of grief, I didn't land. I fell and I fell and I fell. At first, as I plummeted, I feared the landing, imagining an imminent crash. Then I fell through nights and middays, fell through kitchen floors and highways, fell through birthdays and Saturdays, fell until the sense of groundlessness was so familiar, it no longer felt like peril. I don't know when I stopped falling. There was no splat, no splash, no crushing of bones, no sense of arrival. In fact, I'm not certain I'm done with my falling. But I do trust now. The falling is not something to be feared. Not that we grow wings. This is not about flying, it's about falling, about meeting the gravity and feeling its force and letting it carry me in ways I have never before let myself be carried. Now I trust that the canyon of grief is just another name for living the fullest life. The reward for the falling is to no longer expect a reward. The reward of falling is to learn to not resist the falling. The reward of falling is to feel how grace falls with us as if holding our hand like a teacher, like a friend.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Wow. Yeah. Grace falls with us.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yes. You know, I'm gonna just pipe in like I usually do and say when we don't have the words to really express what we're moving through, a very opportune poem can tell the story of that one feeling. Because I feel like last week I talked to Joaquil, and I'm like, I think I'm just entering into this crisis mode, and that is it right there. It's the falling. I'm falling into the canyon of grief. So thank you for naming what I'm feeling.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Yeah, so so beautiful. Yeah, I'm just gonna take a couple more breaths of that. So lovely. Um can you maybe tell us a little bit about your story? What inspired you to become a poet or be to begin to kind of deal and work in this particular area of poetry?

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Well, I guess two very different answers. First of all, writing poems uh came early for me in when I was 10 years old and started writing poems in in school. I was like, oh, this is fun, and started reading lots of poems. And I and I fell in love with poetry for the the play of it, for the joy of it, for what happens when we you know clink two words together, and then you're like, oh, that's so that's so fun. How that happened, you know, it feels good. So that is also true, I will say, when we write the most difficult poems, there is still that joy. You know, Shell Silverstein was my first favorite poet. And I feel like he's a great example of how he wrote everything he wrote was with a dark, dark underbelly. And there was so much play and joy in what he was doing. And I feel like that translates to me still. So I did have a poetry practice for many, many, many years before I started a daily poetry practice, like you mentioned in the introduction 20 years ago. That changed everything, of course. And what I didn't know was that what I was really doing was embarking on a practice of showing up and meeting every day and wondering what's here, what's here, what else is here? And it was that practice of showing up that I feel like well, I don't think it's too dramatic to say it saved me when my son Finn chose to take his life in August of 2021. And I think because I had a practice of showing up every day when the stakes were much lower than when the stakes were higher, like the highest, um I still wanted to show up.

SPEAKER_04 9:04

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Dare I ask this, but you you you're spending your days doing your poetry work every day. Is this your full-time work? It is.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

It is for the last uh I left my job. I was a social worker. I left my job in 2019. And since then, it has been my full-time work. And I am one of those people who was actually deeply blessed by COVID and that the whole world went online, including me. I live very remotely. And before that, uh it was much less possible to do this full-time, and now I I teach a lot. I teach a lot of individual students uh and classes, not through universities really, but more usually through spiritual organizations or classes that I lead myself, you know, just through myself. Uh, and also, as you mentioned, I do every other month, I lead grief writing workshops for Evermore.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Oh, yeah. Tell us more about Evermore. What is that?

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yeah. Evermore is a remarkable organization that if if you're in grief or bereavement, I really suggest you find them. They are an international, uh, excuse me, a national organization located in Washington, D.C. They have, however, uh resources for every state and and that go beyond state lines also. And really a big part of what they do is advocate uh at a national lawmaking level for laws that help people who are in bereavement, making it a more just and equitable um experience for for everybody. Um knowing that that it's you know, for instance, they they were pivotal in getting making it possible for people to come home from the armed services when someone died, um getting that that legislation in place. So that's a big part of what they do. But also shortly after Finn died, probably a year or two after Finn died, they contacted me and and asked me to be part of a program. And then after that, I got a letter from them saying, Would you be our poet laureate? We don't even know if that's a thing for nonprofits, but would you? And and then we just started dreaming things up, where I often will put write a, you know, I'll have a poem that I'll perform and they'll put it up on their on their social media pages. And then also we started doing these these workshops for people who are grieving called, I believe it's called the mystery of grief. They're very inexpensive or free if you need free, and just a way to offer uh an a way for people to show up, knowing that the point isn't to write something good, right? That's the first thing I say almost every time is let's all agree none of us will write anything good tonight. But could we all write something true? And in this way, allowing ourselves to to show up with a blank page and and maybe not write things. I also say, you know, if you don't write a single word, this is also fine. If you just show up, that's really all that's asked of you. That's quite enough.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah, yeah. Isn't that the name of the game? Show up, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, thank you. Um, yeah. Did you have something, Ana Luisa, or do you want to maybe have another poem?

SPEAKER_01 12:35

I think it's time for a poem.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Yeah, I think so too.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

All right. Well, this that first poem that I read is from my new book, The Wonderment, um, which is coming out in September, September 8th. And this this poem is also from The Wonderment, and I guess I won't say anything about it, I'll just read it. How the light came. And it was in the darkest time when she was most lost, before she even knew to ask for help. It was then that the light arrived. As a firefly, it so happens, a radiance so tiny she might have missed it had it not lit up right in front of her face at the very moment her friend spoke of love. Perhaps she would have resisted it if she'd had energy for resistance. Even the smallest brilliance can be terrifying when it asks us to see life as it really is. As it is. The love light entered her, humble as a beetle, significant as a star. It glowed so brightly that others could see it. It responded to her trust. It met her in silent rooms and lonely days, it shined into deep uncertainty. It offered her no answers. It suggested a thousand, thousand right paths. We could say the light didn't change a thing. We could say the light changed everything. Who was she to receive a miracle? Let's not call it miracle then. Let's call it wonder. Call it unlikely luck. But there is no way to pretend it didn't happen. The light entered her. Even now she tends that light it glows brighter the more she gives it away. There's a little story behind the poem I'd love to share with you. Um the the night my son died, we were in Georgia helping my parents move into their new home. And by we, I mean my whole family, my husband, my son, my daughter, Vivian. And the night that he died, that very night, I was out walking in the streets in the middle of the in the dark, um, in the middle of the road. It was, it was kind of a remote place, Airbnb, where we were staying. And the um I was talking with my beloved friend Wendy Vidalock, who's a beautiful poet, and she said to me, He has given you his love light to carry. And the very moment she said that, a firefly lit up right in front of my face. The very moment she said love light. I was like, Oh my god, Wendy, you won't believe what just happened. This firefly lit up right when you said that. I'll never forget this. Five minutes later, I was like, I forgot what I said. What did you say? I guess I mean you can't hold stuff, right? But he has given you his love light to carry. And I think about this, Waquila and Ana Luisa, I think about the incredible gift of that moment right in the depths of grief, in the in the most dark, as I say in the poem, in the darkest time when I was most lost. To have that coincidence, that miracle. Um, and those words to to immediately have the loss of him framed as how how do I step into a legacy of love? And how profoundly that changed the the way that I began meeting this great loss, already thinking how how is it that I carry his love light? And what is how how do I as a person go on with with that love and with that light?

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Wow. Ooh, that's a beautiful story. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Such a legacy that the the light, that kismet moment that you encountered where all of those things can be true.

unknown 17:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Yeah, yeah. In your poem, you said unlikely luck, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. Wow, very beautiful. Yeah, we've had people come on the podcast and talk about having um witnessed, you know, conversation or connections from people who've left. And um, and I, you know, I I have to, you know, in my past I've been much more cynical, scientific, kind of, you know. Um, and but you know, I I've seen too much in my many years uh and heard now many, many more stories that just it obviously that we are given these incredible gifts, um, and you know, who knows how they come to us, but um they're such blessings and to recognize that and to have that um steer your life or guide your path is so so profound. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. It's lovely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

You know, I often think, well, why would I pretend this isn't happening? Like what good what good is that doing anybody? Like, okay, this is this is happening, clearly. You know, do I need to say why or do I need to label it? But I think too, just this this moment of this it this immediate reframing of of the experience as a as a love experience, yeah, and how um I those are the words I think I'd long to give everyone who's experiencing loss. You know, they have given you their love light to carry. Just I I want to say that I want everyone to have that that invitation, whether they choose to take it up or not. That's you know, that's theirs. But to know that there's an invitation to carry forward a love light from someone else's is such a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Yeah, what a beautiful acknowledgement of the grief and the loss and and uh how what a the gift that it can bring you. Yeah. If you carry that.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Well, and it's it's the story, and in a in a certain way, it's like it he continues to be alive with us. It's it's an active there's a light that was activated by his essence that you are now charging others to carry. And so there is no, there is just a different iteration of oneself, right? So that's you know precious.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

I'm thinking too of how um how there was a another moment that was a couple of nights later, and I was just talking about this with a friend this morning, um, and how profound this moment was also turning me toward love, which I think was just a just how lucky I was that this was that this happened. There was a moment, and this is one of the poems that I sent you. Um, it's from all the honey. And and I I'll just I'll recite the poem um because it tells the story and then maybe we could talk about it. But uh the poem is called The Invitation. Two nights after he died, all night I played the same one-line story on repeat. I am the woman whose son took his life. The words filled me with self pity, hopelessness, doom. And then another voice came a woman's voice, just before dawn, and it offered 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. It changed everything about how I met the facts. Over a hundred days later, now over five years later, I am still learning what it means to love him. How love is an ocean, a wildfire, a crumb. How the invitation to love changes me. It changes everyone, invites us to bring our best love, is wine, is trampoline, is a song with an infinite 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 rough legged hawk. Like a sun.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Rosary, as I listened to that at home, I really had the uh the Nautilus feel to it. And that the the essence of loss is there throughout, but the difference is you and how you're growing through time, and it's just changing, but it's still a Nautilus, and it's still going around the same loss, the same story, the same, you know, love light. And it's so uh learning out of love, yeah. Yeah, your poems are so generous. I really appreciate this. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Yeah. Tell us more about that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

The the the changing of that story, um or reframing that story, I guess this is one thing that I know is so powerful about poetry, what poetry has to offer us, is that it it helps us see the story we were telling, but it also helps us to tell a new story, um, one that might help us live into the world in a more life-affirming, loving way. So the story, I'm I'm the woman whose son took his life, right? That that it was a true story. That was true, but it was, it was, um, I could just even feel it in me now, like how my whole body kind of constricts and it goes tighter and it doesn't, it feels terrible. That story is no less true with I am the woman who learns how to love him now that he's gone. And that incredibly life-affirming, love-affirming story is still a story, but but it's a new frame. It's a frame that that has allowed me to um not suffer that I should say it this way the pain is never not there, right? It is always not, it is always not easy. But there is some suffering that's optional, and that that story of of shame and victim is actually an optional story. That's optional suffering. So to find a pathway forward through framing, through poetry, through a metaphor, you know, how do I love like a hawk? How do I love like a wave? How do I love like like a sun? How do I do that? And and that constant curiosity and reframing is is one way that we can meet the most awful moments in our lives with wonder and curiosity and even the some of that playfulness that we were talking about earlier.

SPEAKER_03 24:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

And even to allow for language to expand. And, you know, the the sensations that we encounter are given not just a one dimension, but it's it's actually filled out and you know, it is changing. It's uh it's almost like the word is a live document that continues to grow. Yeah, beautifully said.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah. I was just listening to um another poet, and I'll see if I can remember her name, uh, Chanel, Chanel, um, who's relatively new and just um wrote a book, wrote a poem that kind of went. She said it was like she's writing poetry and it would get 20 or 30 hits, and then she wrote this poem about the worst thing we ever did. Do you know who I'm talking about? Anyway, yeah, anyway, she said that just went overnight, turned into um you know 20, 30, 40,000 people noticing it. And then Daniel Lodinsky called her up because she was quoting his. And anyway, it's an interesting story. But one of the things she said that really struck me as we're talking about this is how important it is anytime, anywhere, and but as a poet especially to just be putting your ideas down, you know, to have your notebook with you, you know, and uh to really allow these kind of epiphanies to happen and to and carry them for the for the time that you can put them together. I think I I think Moody also pointed that out at some point. Um so I really appreciate that. Um that is beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

The labor of love.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Yeah, and go ahead. I'm just gonna ask. Well, I was gonna say also just not having anything to say, but letting yourself sit with a blank page, I feel like is yeah, much truer to my practice, where I just spend a lot of time sitting with a blank and wondering about what's here. And and that has been actually a profound difference in my own writing life, not needing to come carrying something to a page, that and to not be afraid of a blank page, but to know that if I just sit there long enough, something will happen. Uh again, not trusting it doesn't have to be good, it just has to be true. Uh and and after Finn died, the the writing invitation I gave myself for well, I didn't write. That's part of it. I didn't write at all for seven weeks after he died. I think in part because what part of what writing does is it solidifies things in a way. Um it names them. It names them and and they that's so helpful, except when it isn't helpful. And I think that I wanted for those, I and not just wanted, I I needed for those first seven weeks, I needed to have a purity of experience that I didn't try to understand, that I didn't try to name, that I just had that pure window of right here-ness. Um but then when I did start writing, I would give myself, I would just write today grief is, and then I'd fill in that blank. And and most of the time I was filling it in with uh with an object, with a metaphor. So today grief is an eraser, today grief is a cottonwood tree, today grief is a shadow, today grief is a pond, you know, river, whatever. And usually I would have no idea why. I would just let myself look outside the window and or in the in the house, and I would say, okay, this, and what does this thing have to teach me? And the beauty of this practice was that it allowed me to see, number one, that grief was changing all the time, that it that it wasn't, in fact, this one omnipresent uh uh ever ever the same weight that I was holding. Sometimes it wasn't, sometimes it wasn't that, right? Sometimes it was rushing through, and sometimes it was uh ephemeral, and sometimes it was uh, you know, I could lift it, and and sometimes there was no way it was I was crushed. And but just to notice it changed, it changed, it changed. And then also again to bring that curiosity to it. Okay, well, how is it like an eraser? Well, it it's you know, it was erasing him, or is it I'm the one who's being erased, or is it the ideas I had of who I was that are being error, like what is actually being erased here? So it was it was just opening so many new ways of seeing, and there again is that that playfulness, even though it's the hardest thing I've ever experienced, but it it kept allowing for this kind of freshness to this opening to happen, this vast space, the spaciousness to be present.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

I really admire that. And uh, as somebody who it kind of pushes against, you know, the the prayers on paper that you're supposed to recite in order to connect with the divine. Like, you know, it just frustrates me because language, you know, the divine speaks in a language that I I speak, but it's not English. It's not the general, you know, alphabet. Like it just irritates me when I am the rationalists in our community want to name what you're experiencing it so that they can totally flatten you and keep you in that space.

SPEAKER_03 30:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Which is what you know I feel around my spiritual practice. I am so fed up with all these tropes of what it means to connect with the divine. You allowed for spaciousness with a with, you know, and I'm gonna say I I would call it resistance to language because I find myself resisting language at times because I'm like, I don't know if it's that, that, right? Like it's gonna, it'll grow into whatever it needs to be, but you can't name it what I'm feeling. I can't even name it. I'm getting to where it's gonna be. And so, you know, drawing us also back into the end-of-life conversations around what grief looks like, around, you know, the particulars that people want to give you. Like, your son is no longer here. You are a mourning wife or a mother, and this is how we expect you to behave, and this is how long we expect you to go through this and travail. And, you know, you literally broke that for your community and all these listeners or in your poems, because it is such an alive human essence that we live through when we lose and we become erasers, and parts of ourselves are erased, and our lives are erased, and memories are erased or whatnot, right? So I appreciate that. So I really do want to, you know, be um sharing that, you know, when you're in grief, you don't have to have words. You don't have to name anything. Yeah, you can just sit there and let it wash over you for as long as you want it to do.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

So yeah, and your words can can can evolve and emerge um as you go.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Collide and coalesce, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Right, argue with themselves and paradox. I just feel like and paradox is the other, you know, I think major thing that that poetry offers us is a willingness to explore how two things that couldn't possibly be together are completely together.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

That one poem that I read how how the light came, you know, we could say the light didn't change a thing. We could say the light changed everything. They're both true, right? That's right. They're both equally true. Yeah. Or I have a poem called Two Truths. Maybe I'll find it actually. Microphone uh falling. Um it's uh it's a poem uh about well, competing competing truths and how it it that too is part of what opens us.

SPEAKER_04 32:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

Two truths He is dead. Never again to pull on the fencing mask, moonwalk to his bedroom, or snuggle on the couch, not dancing on the stage. He is dead not spinning the gator through the field, not grasping Excuse me, not graphing equations for pleasure. Is he dead? asks the heart. No. He lives on forever in the scent of lemon, in the cloudy ice on the pond, in the buds of the lilac tree, in the song on my breath, he lives in blue sky and comet and field. He lives in ink and in spaces between. He is dead. I held his unbreathing body in my arms since that day. He has never left me. He is alive forever. Yes, he is. Yes, he is.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yeah. Well, yeah. These are hard poets or hard, hard, um hard conversations. Whenever we do these poets, we'd be like, oh my god. Yeah. Let me just leap a little bit here.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

And it's also, I love this as an invitation to others to to live in their own paradox. And this is tough. And oh, just like place your head on something and just not think, not word, not do anything if you're in total grief.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Yeah. You know, that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

Yeah. I just found the name of that poet, so I want to, since I mentioned it, I want to just put it into the uh episode. Is her name is Sh Chanel Brenner. And uh she she writes about um grief and loss. And anyway, she was on a uh podcast yesterday, and I was like, oh, another poem. We gotta get her.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Anyway, but um yeah, I just I don't know. I I I think another poem makes sense. I don't know why keep going, you know.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

I I tell you, I have read lots of poems that are are really focused on grief. Um, I feel like that isn't that isn't all I write about anymore. Uh it is the nature of the podcast. So part of me wonders if if if I should read something that's uh you know more life affirming or like or well, because we are living in paradox, like both grief and and joy can abound. So well, and I'll say that the the book, the first book that I put out after Finney died, All the Honey, came out of this idea of um that book, in fact, is is completely uh poems that are written before and after he died. And and my dad and Finn, my dad died three months after my son. They came there I had a I had a vision. Again, like I'm I could pretend this didn't happen, but it did. Um, so I had a vision in which dad and Finn came and they they kind of carved into my bedroom walls all the honey in all caps. And I was like, what does that mean? And and I came to understand that all of the honey that's ever been made is from the bitterness of the pollen and the sweetness of the nectar. And this is this is bringing the these two elements together through the bees is is how we get all the honey. So I was like, of course that's it. Like, of course, these poems are going to be both funny and and devastating. Of course, that's what a book needs to be. Um, and then the book that came out after that one, The Unfolding, were all words I made up for praise that all were deeply nuanced words for praise, like sorom, which is sorrow plus om, you know, the the praise that rises only when we're in the most difficult moments of our lives. Um, and then this new book, The Wonderment, again, this it's the four gateways to wonder. And one of the gateways to wonder is of course through through meeting the most difficult moments with as much openness as we can. Um, all right, here's a wonder finding poem. Um it says 59, but it's not 59. Oh, I see. I got it. Here we go. All right. Um, this is this is a poem that in fact I write almost never write prose poems because I really don't understand what is that supposed to be. It kind of pissed me off. Um but but it'll, you know, all of our nevers, we get to meet all our nevers. So here's the poem I thought I'd never write a prose poem called After Carmel Tells Me About Her Trip to India. And when the gates swung wide and my friend arrived at the palace, the vast grounds were emerald and lush, lined with tropical trees, and a full staff greeted her at the great door, where a man led her through a courtyard filled with night blooming jasmine, spilling their sweet scent into the dark. And just outside the door to her room was a large blue pool. And when she asked if it was too late to swim that night, the man said, Madam, the palace is yours. And he gave her a large brass key. Today, the palace is the red slick rock towers as I drive through the canyons of Utah. The palace is the delirious deep blue trance of clear Colorado sky. The palace is the sharp scent of sage by the side of the road that wraps me in silvery pungent perfume when I stop to stretch my cramping legs. It's in soft spring grass now growing from desert dust, growing like green praise after recent rain. I have been given the key to the palace, and it's made of nothing more than the willingness to offer the world my attention. Black call of crow, subtle shine of low sun on dark varnished cliffs, low hum of tires on the highway, talking to Ana Luisa and Joaquil. It's yours, they all say the palace is yours. Here's the key. Receive it. Receive it.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah. And jump into that pool. I just got goosebumps. I have goosebumps.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

I can totally see your images of Colorado. And I love it.

unknown 40:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Oh, you're such a gift.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Oh. Well, and the the joy of this poem for me uh was thinking of this story that Carmel had told me the night before. And I'm I'm thinking of it. I'm driving home from Salt Lake City, and I'm like, oh, yeah, here. It's right here. This is the palace. Like, where isn't the palace? It was such a it was such a sweet, um thrilling moment, you know. And and then and then to to notice for myself how that that comes to every single moment. What moment isn't the palace? Not just the driving home, not just the moment, you know, but even is it possible the palace is even these moments of deepest grief? Is it possible even this is the palace? That's right. What where is the beauty here? And how does wonder, how does curiosity, how does our our willingness to be opened, I say be opened, right? Because I don't know that we get to do it ourselves, but how does our willingness to be opened um allow for us to meet each moment as the palace? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Yeah. Yeah. To be cracked.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Who could ask for it? Nobody. Nobody could ask for it.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

No, yes, and yet we can all receive it. Yeah. Well, that's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Um, we are kind of getting close, but I'd just love to offer if there's anything else you would want to share, and we'll definitely put all of this information in the podcast notes for people so they can find you and find your information. And uh is uh and yeah, I love I love that we had this opportunity to just be taken away by by your beauty, the beauty of your vision and your poetry. So thank you so much. And again, if you've got anything else, another poem you want to share before we end, we'd be pleased.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

And also, I want to know if you're gonna be doing a book tour through Denver.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

You know, I don't have anything set up right now on the front range, which is kind of silly. I am going all over the place and not to the front range where I have so many friends, including my beautiful stepdaughter and her husband. But so that'll happen for sure in the in the winter. I'm thinking come January, February. Then I'll start planning some things up that direction.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Are you coming to Seattle?

SPEAKER_02 42:50

Seattle? No, I've got a couple of trips to California. I'm gonna be in um Vermont and Massachusetts. Oh, I'm I'm going to be doing a uh grief retreat at Krapallu in October. Um, so an in-person retreat on grief, which is nice. It's so funny, actually, when when I was there last time doing this, we we ended up having the very best time. And all the groups, you know, at night we'd be hanging out laughing and laughing. And the other groups that were there would come up and they'd say, What group is this? And grief group. They're like, We're with the grief group. It was that was kind of awesome. I love that. Well, I maybe I will read um one more poem then about about meeting an anniversary of uh of a beloved, maybe not the one that I just wrote because this year, which was just last last week, um, but there's one on page 50 that that talks about how do we find the Holy In these most difficult moments. I guess it's no different from the palace. So this is one that I wrote four years on the four-year death anniversary of my son. So alive. Finn, the larkspur are nearly done blooming now. The tall stalks are scruffy with seed pods where the dark blue petals used to be. Is it strange to give you the garden report? Today is four years since you chose to leave this world of bindweed and deep red dahlia. This world of millipedes of green beans dangling on their vines. The sky is thick with smoke from a wildfire not so far away. It was a relief when it began to rain while I was picking snapdragons and sunflowers, zinnias and lavender. I didn't mind getting drenched while I filled five vases with flowers. Four vases were our home, and one your father and I took to your grave. I felt so alive in the middle of the storm, arranging the blossoms and vases just so while the water dripped from my hair, my nose. I felt so alive as I smelled the air and spoke to you, and the flowers and sky. Today my friend Winnie told me one way to keep life sacred is to ask the holy to come. Please, I said as I stood in the rows. Please come. Is it possible? The asking itself is the bridge from the everyday to the holy. Because I felt it. There in the rain with my grief-bent heart, there beside the calendula, aphids and all, hair plastered to my head, tears hot on my face, memory of you writing, I love you in the carrot bed. Me making bouquets for a difficult day. Even when it hurts.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Yeah. Wow. There's so many, so many ways I love that.

SPEAKER_03 46:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

Ah, wow. Well, what a blessing to have time with you.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

We uh we will um be in touch and um appreciate you so much.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

So thank you, Joaquil. Thank you, Ana Luisa.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Thank you for joining us today. Thank you to Charles Heastan, the composer of the original music you are listening to now.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

And of course, thanks to you, our audience, and all of our amazing guests. Please come back next week for another great episode. Share this with your friends, family, and community. We hope you will subscribe and follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack. Each guest's additional information will be found in the podcast notes. And of course, if you have a good end of life story to share, please reach out. We are always eager to hear from you.