Shavasana
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Once again, the field rehearses how to die.
Some of the grass turns golden first. Some
simply fades into brown. Just this morning,
I, too, lay in corpse pose, practicing
how to let myself be totally held by the earth
without striving, how to meet the day
without rushing off to do the next necessary
or beautiful thing. Soon, the grass will bend
or break, molder or disintegrate. Every year,
the same lesson in how to join
the darkness, how to be unmade, how quietly
we might lean into the uncertainty,
how generous the ground.
Read this and other poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer in Hush, from Middle Creek Publishing (2020), available for purchase online.
This poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s luminous collection, Hush, challenges our typical fears of the cycles of mortality. Instead of resisting or bemoaning the “uncertainty” with which we all must live out lives, not knowing when they’ll end, or when our loved ones will pass on, she chooses to celebrate how “the field rehearses to die,” noting how some of the grass “turns golden first,” while “some simply fades into brown.” The fact that her speaker muses on this all while lying in “shavasana,” the corpse pose of yoga often used at the end of a session for relaxation, only serves to underline the depth of her surrender to this moment of peace she’s made with death, allowing herself to be “totally held by the earth without striving.” In the final lines of the poem, in spite of our dread of illness and the body breaking down, she urges us to look toward autumn and the coming of winter to learn “how to join the darkness, how to be unmade” in ways that seem simpler and more inviting than we have perhaps ever imagined.
Invitation for Writing & Reflection: What lesson is the natural world teaching you right now? What do you notice about the cycle of the seasons that stands out to you, and what are they showing you about your own relationship to life’s unfolding?
ABOUT THE POET: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives on the banks of the San Miguel River in southwest Colorado. She co-hosts the Emerging Form podcast, the Stubborn Praise poetry series and Secret Agents of Change (a kindness cabal). Her poems have been featured on A Prairie Home Companion, American Life in Poetry, PBS Newshour and Oprah Magazine. Her most recent book is Hush, winner of the Halcyon Prize from Middle Creek Publishing for a collection of books about human ecology. One-word mantra: Adjust.
POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS
James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.
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