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Archive for August, 2018

 

after The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm by Wallace Stevens

 

 

 

The field was high and the sun was low

and the woman became the light; and the evening

 

slowed its pace perhaps to let the light remain.

The field was high and the sun was low.

 

She moved as though there were no night

worth fearing, as if the field could hold it all.

 

She leaned into the goldening, the way

the light itself leans softly on the world.

 

The night, a gentle friend, meandered quietly

across the land. There were no words

 

that could be said. The field was high

and the sun was lower. Slowly, hushed,

 

the wind a sigh, the field surrendered

all its lines. The darkness gathered

 

everything, the field, the woman, even

light, and made itself an offering.

 

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Meditation

 

 

 

 

And when sorrow arrives for tea

and stains the table cloth

with its great mass of gray,

and when sorrow arrives

and drives everyone else away,

do not leave, alarmed though you are

by its slumping weight.

Offer your attentiveness.

See how it almost radiates?

There are myths in which monsters

transform into princes.

It always takes courage. And kisses.

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Just One More Page

 

 

 

so eager to turn

the pages in my novel, I neglect

the pages of my life

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We are perhaps like neurons

that never touch—

but that doesn’t stop

the chemical buzz,

the lightning charge,

the electric thrill

that leaps the gap—

and in that span

all meaning is made,

long red ropes of memory

twisting and knotting,

braiding, unbraiding,

and nothing

is ever the same.

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we sit in a circle

a hammock of song appears—

it cradles us all night

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Losing It

 

 

It was a tiny percentage, I knew, but still

there was some French royalty somewhere

in my blood. I would spend hours imagining

myself in my proper place: in a long pink dress

 

and thin gold crown in a castle on a green hillside,

doing needlepoint, no doubt, and nibbling bon bons,

and so when I again asked my mother to tell me about

that part of our heritage, she told me,

 

It’s so little blood, and you’ve had so many

skinned knees, I’m pretty sure you’ve

bled it all out by now. And I was instantly

less grandiose. That was, perhaps, the first identity

 

that I was aware of losing. But soon after that,

I was no longer blonde. And soon after that,

I no longer lived in Wisconsin. And soon after that,

I was no longer a Scout. Everything I thought

 

I knew about myself didn’t last. Ah,

the litany of losses. Those notions of who we are,

how they shed, they spill, they slip off.

As they’re lost, we usually rush to replace them.

 

I became worker. Lover. Parent. Friend.

We wear them so close, these identities ,

that we no longer see them as separate. We think

they’re who we are. But what if we skinned

 

not just our knees, but our thoughts,

and let those roles escape? Who would

be left to walk through the field this evening

to see the double rainbow stretched across the east?

 

 

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wrestled by the moon

until daybreak, until losing my name,

I, too, am shining

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After the Drought

 

 

even my worry

decides to kick off its shoes

and play in the rain—

forgetting for a moment

its soggy gray socks

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Up the Hill

 

 

You walk fast,

she said, and

I said, I was walking

fast to keep up

with you, and

she said, I was

walking fast to

keep up with you

and we laughed

at ourselves as

our feet found

a new rhythm,

our hearts, too.

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Misty

 

 

And sometimes when I move

at the edge of a greatness—

a lake or a sea or a mountainside—

my insignificance thrills me

and the largest of my sadnesses

dwindles smaller than the space

between grains of sand

and in that moment,

knowing my place,

comes a love so enormous

I can love anyone, anyone,

even myself.

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One Blooming

 

looking outside myself

for my dream, when all along

it takes my shape

 

 

Thank You Letter to My Lungs

 

No matter the shame,

the fear, the loss, the pain,

you bring the outside in

and then share what’s inside

with everything else,

 

and rhythmically, quietly,

hidden and tireless,

you stich me,

unite me

to the cloth of all that is.

 

How do I sometimes

ignore the communion?

And you breathe on,

barely audible prayer,

weaving me into here, here, here.

 

 

 

One Reason for Clarity

 

 

playing hide and seek

with myself, I always win

I always lose

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lesson

 

 

I said to love I am lost

and she gave me

 

a ladder, a leaf,

a crooked blue door,

an alley I’d never

traveled before,

 

a room with no ceiling

three circles, some green,

bouquet of uncertainty

scent of spring,

 

a small red window

a straight backed chair.

Still lost? she said.

Now share.

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Surprise

 

 

 

Climbing higher

than you thought

you could

to the top

of something

you don’t understand

to leave a sacrifice

of more than

you thought

you could give,

it’s enough

to make you

wildly alive,

perhaps

even happy.

 

 

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Our Birthright

 

 

 

Don’t say, don’t say

that no one can help us now—

 

there are hands all around us,

all of them reaching,

 

in every corner appears

bright wings,

 

and, like a miracle

that’s always been waiting

 

to happen, out of the stump

of yourself emerges

 

your own open hand.

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You Are Invited

 

 

Today, a party, and the whole world

is invited. No written invitations,

but the occasion? It’s Wednesday.

And here we are, all of us, in the same place

at the same time. Might as well

get to know the person standing

next to you—learn their name,

shake their hand, discover

all you have in common—

the party goes on tomorrow, too.

Bring your own. Bring something

to share. No RSVP, just show up.

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Yesterday, I had an interview come out in Writing to be Read, a blog about writers and Writing. We talked about inspiration and creative habits and the art of performing … and a whole lot more. You can read it all here.

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The words that will change us

remember, perhaps,

when they were first found

by the person willing

to serve them—

 

they carry in their serifs

a willingness to wait,

late nights of wrestling silence,

the wing of receiving, the joy

in sharing the gift.

 

When we read them, they enter us

like tiny notes in a score we never knew

we were part of until one day

there is music everywhere

and we are the ones being sung.

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Hello Poetry Friends!

Today I got word that Jazz Jaeschke at Story Circle Book Reviews did a wonderful (positive!) review of my most recent book, Naked for Tea. 

“Trommer’s poems run the gamut from the sensual to the sublime,” she writes, calling the voice in the book “wise, practical yet whimsical.”

You can read the whole review here.

You can buy the collection here. at the publisher’s website, or on Amazon.

And if you have read the book, will you please consider writing a brief review of your own and putting it on Amazon here.

 

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I’m learning to write tension in my scenes,

to add desire, danger and distress,

to focus on what my character wants

and all the forces keeping her from getting

it—a train arrives too early to be caught,

she doesn’t get the job she wants,

she doesn’t have the funds to pay her rent,

she loses her cat in the city again—

I am trying to let bad things happen.

Otherwise there is no tension,

and, as the book on writing says,

No tension equals boring. Think

obstacle, it instructs. Think grief and

shame and fear. But all I want to do

is make my character cheerful,

happy, glad. I want to immediately fix

all the problems I won’t let her have.

I want to make her life easier—

give her security, friendship,

great sex, true love. Is it so wrong

to want to serve her everything

I want? Create opposition, says the book,

and I try, I do, to write in her weaknesses,

let her mess up, struggle on every page.

But oh, to make her life not just happily

ever after but happily all along the way,

perfect and boring, the kind of life

that no one has, the kind of life

that no one wants to read about,

the dream job offers streaming in, the lover

ever attentive, handsome, adoring,

the sun shining as she thoughtfully sips her tea.

 

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They hang in the closet, their shoulders fading,

all these clothes I can’t bear to take

to the Second Chance.

The black cocktail dress with the plunging neck

its bodice snug, its open back,

made for a sassy uptown evening,

and the deep red jacket, more froth than cloth,

artsy and hand stitched, something to wear

on stage or to an art opening.

The silvery coat that fits like snake skin,

and the long silk skirt just right for a beach

that I’ve never been to in France.

Every day I walk to the same plastic hanger

in the middle of the closet and pull off the same

black cotton dress, somewhat shapeless,

perfect for pulling dandelions in the garden

or going to the grocery store to buy eggs,

for driving my son to math camp or hiking in Bear Creek.

Every day I choose that same black dress, every day, and why not,

when it’s equally well suited for paying bills

and washing breakfast dishes and dusting the unplayed piano.

Just right for waiting on hold for the insurance company

or writing an article about the history of kitchens or

changing the water in the fish tank, or, for that matter,

for cleaning the closet as I look again at all those beautiful clothes

and choose to keep them, let them hang right where they are,

a testament to some other woman I used to be. Huh, she was younger,

but you know, I almost look like her.

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want to find him in my kitchen

with his big muscled arms

and his spotless white shirt.

Call me James, he’ll say, as I

pour him a glass of sauvignon blanc.

Then he’ll pull out a permanent marker

and write his name on the glass.

What are you doing? I’ll ask.

When I’m around, there’s a world

 

of crafty possibilities, he’ll say.

Then he’ll whip out his trusty white magic eraser

and swipe the permanent marker away.

And he’ll give me a spin—

Open for me your oven door.

Oh, James, I’ll say, you don’t mean …

 

… that I will bring my legendary clean

to your oven glass? Why yes, Rosemerry,

I can lift grease buildup from hard to clean places.

He’ll give me a flex. Kitchen sink next?

He’ll swagger across the room. I’ll swoon.

Oh, James. I never knew you’d be so, so, so …

 

… adept at sticky residue? he’ll suggest,

and I’ll guide his hand to my

faucet. Say good bye to water spots,

he’ll say with a grin, his teeth glistening

like brand new white backsplash tile, like unused linoleum,

and we’ll dance together across the sparkling floor, sponges in hand,

drawn to whatever is dirty. And the room will smell

of meadows and bleach and rain. And oh darling, he’ll say,

don’t you think it’s time you took me to the bath?

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