Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for April, 2017

 

 

 

After many, many hours in the car,

through spring blizzards and shine,

over passes and through tunnels,

we have conversed about loneliness

and loss, isolation and struggle,

we’ve found laughter inside

awkwardnesses and cried

for reasons we don’t understand

and we have solved nothing

of the world’s problems, nor our own,

but in this last hour, a lovely

silence joins us in the car,

all those unanswered questions

somehow content to look out the window

and admire with us the white rumps of elk

and the mountains newly covered

with snow, so much already

growing beneath the white.

 

Read Full Post »

Permanent

 

 

 

In the corner of the closet

in permanent marker

I wrote in small letters

“this room belongs

to Rosemerry Wahtola

forever and ever, no matter

who else lives here.”

 

The room had been built

for me in the basement

by my father, and I loved

its orange carpet, its

subterranean dark,

the way I could close

the door and be entirely alone.

 

The room was not mine,

no more than the mountains

are mine, these mountains

I love for their openness,

their long trails, their cliffs,

their secret glades.

 

No, it is always we

who belong to the spaces

that hold us, though

they change, they mark us

invisibly, they write

on our inner walls,

as if to say you are mine,

child, forever.

 

 

Read Full Post »

 

 

 

In the glass case

is a necklace

with 5,000 stone beads

all drilled and strung

over a thousand years ago

and I think of the man

whose hands did the work—

how he chose not just

to survive, but to make

something beautiful.

I think of your hands,

of the choices

they make,

quiet nights,

all around us,

so much beauty.

 

 

Read Full Post »

 

 

 

then I guess it’s fair to say

that today, we walked on water—

how easy it is to not notice

how our every step

is miracle

Read Full Post »

 

 

 

and the mouth puckers

into sweet distress

as if saying something kind

while the mind kicks the tongue

and says liar, liar.

Read Full Post »

 

 

 

willing my feet

to go slowly, slower

than that, eavesdropping

on some inner quiet

I’d forgotten was there

Read Full Post »

 

 

How could I know

it’d be a weed

that would save me—

 

one which I’ve

spent hours on my knees

trying to eradicate—

 

didn’t know that

on a day when

I needed to believe in spring,

 

it would appear in the quack grass,

its tiny purple flowers

calling to me

 

as if I were not the woman

who had uprooted them,

calling to me

 

as if I too

have some spring

left in me.

 

Read Full Post »

One Unlearning

 

 

 

peeling away the film—

discovering how to sing

in a voice I can’t call my own

Read Full Post »

Hello friends,

I hope you can join me in a four-week poetry discussion class on living with uncertainty.

Week 1: Accepting Uncertainty as a Part of Life

Week 2: How Inviting the Unknown Helps us Live More Richly

Week 3: How we Find Ourselves by Getting Lost

Week 4: The Generative Power of Not Knowing

The class is offered through Weehawken Arts in Ridgway, Colorado, 12-2 p.m. on Wednesdays. To read more or sign up, please click https://www.weehawkenarts.org/classes/22-classes/creative-arts/153-living-with-uncertainty-a-poetry-discussion-series-with-rosemerry-wahtola-trommer

Read Full Post »

Touched

 

 

 

The heron flies away

and its great blue wings

touch the surface of the water.

For a time, after the heron

is gone, the twin concentric wrinkles remain.

If you leaned far enough, you could

see your reflection in ripples,

your image warped by the memory

of flight. The water

returns to its stillness,

your face again your familiar face—

but that is not the way

with all memories.

Sometimes, we

never see ourselves

the same again.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »