Spring Writing
Rosemary Wahtola Trommer’s poem, Kindness embodies the essence of the Spring season for me. I love the idea of planting seeds of kindness in the ground and allowing "a bit of beauty, a kind word,” to later emerge again, not knowing in who or where they may sprout in the world. We touch each other, in kindness, each day, as we offer the seeds of our own gifts; a poem, a piece of art, a song of joy, a freshly baked loaf of bread. Our authentic, perfectly, imperfect lives grow in richness and depth reaching farther than we know.
I invite you to allow this beautiful poem to inspire you to write your own poem or short piece. Below are a few prompts to help you get started and I also share a version I wrote inspired by her work.
Consider how you rise every spring, out of the same soil.
What is the condition of your soil right now?
How can you prepare your inner environment for planting?
What seeds of kindness are you planting this spring?
Kindness
ROSEMERRY WAHTOLA TROMMER
​
Consider the tulip,
how it rises every spring
out of the same soil,
which is, of course,
not at all the same soil,
but new.
How long ago
someone’s hands planted a bulb
and gave to this place
a living scrap of beauty.
Consider the six red petals,
the yellow at the center,
the soft green rubber of the stem,
how it bows to the world. How,
the longer we sit beside it,
the more we bow to it, too.
It is something like kindness:
someone plants
in someone else a bit of beauty—
a kind word,
perhaps, or a touch, the gift
of their time or their smile.
And years later, in that inner soil
that beauty emerges again,
pushing aside the dead leaves,
insisting on beauty,
a celebration of the one who planted it,
the one who perceives it, and
the fertile place where it has grown.
​Spring
Inpsired by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s “Kindness”
Out of the soil I rise again.
Once a girl, now a woman
with a single grey braid down her back.
The ground of me still stirs to
the mockingbirds call at twilight.
The roots of beauty,
of animal, of plant and of planet
grow through the layers of my soil.
Each Spring,
a new version of myself,
Each Spring,
a reminder of who I always have been.
M.Hartsook
