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Archive for June, 2020

 

for C, A, A, A and J

 

 

I want to share with you a trail with no map

and the clean scent of spruce and a clear Colorado sky.

I want to spend an afternoon above tree line

in a field of corn lilies and alpine buttercups

the pica chirping brightly in the rockfall.

Let’s not find the lake we were looking for.

Let’s stop where our feet say stop.

I want to share a leap and a shimmy,

a chocolate cookie, the mighty salt of love.

I want to slide down snowfields on our raincoats,

to find more paths to take another day,

to wade through the cold rush of change.

I want to take a bolt cutter to any door

that won’t let us in, to let the ears of my heart

attune to your words, to lose our hats to the wind

and find them again. And as the night

fills the room, I want to sing as the guitar

of friendship finds a new tune. I want to hear it

play on long after the day has gone.

 

 

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Lights Out

 

 

We would be tucked into our twin beds,

and dad would sit in the door way.

Every night, he’d tell us a story about a boy

and a girl who were very much

like my brother and me, only they lived

amongst the dinosaurs. I don’t remember

how the stories went, but I remember

how I loved them, how my father’s voice

became part of the night, how everything

always turned out right for the kids

in the story. How much I wanted

to be that girl who rode on a pterodactyl,

and how grateful I felt to be the girl I was,

snug under the thin blue blanket,

our small room a cave where anything

could happen, the low tones of my father

quietly cradling me toward sleep.

 

 

 

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“Here Rosemerry shows us how one might endeavor to be the peace we want in the world. One comes away remembering that tending is at the heart of all healing. Because thorn bush. Because great blue heron. Because puddles.”
— Wendy Videlock, author of Nevertheless

Hush Front Cover JPEG

My new book, Hush, is just out! Winner of the Halcyon Prize for a collection of poems about human ecology, it’s a book-long love song to humanity and the natural world. It’s driven by curiosity and a willingness to dance in the unknown. The poems celebrate the broken, the lowly, the humble, the parched, the lost–and find beauty at every turn. And it features a fabulous foreword by Craig Childs, author of Virga and Bone, Apocalyptic Planet and The Secret Knowledge of Water.

You can see the book and purchase it on my website–and I will sign it for you! Or of course you can order it from your local bookseller (please support them) or from Amazon.

And you can hear me read a few poems from it in this reading I did a few weeks ago with Danusha Laméris and James Crews.

I totally believe in giving poems away—as you know—and I will continue to send you poems every day. AND, I would really appreciate it if you would support this poetry practice by purchasing a book. It would mean a lot to me.

Also, if you do order Hush, I would really appreciate it if you would consider writing a review for it on Goodreads or Amazon.

If you want to set up a reading for your organization, send me a note!

love, Rosemerry

“With Hush, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer once again turns her attention toward insights gleaned from daily life, trusting that everything we encounter, from evergreens and bluebonnets to snapdragons and an achy back after shoveling snow, has something to teach us about being human. Throughout each of these exquisite, open-hearted, often sensual poems, she brings us along as she finds a kind of “renegade beauty” wherever she looks. “Let’s go outside,” she writes, “and praise/the light till the light is gone, and then praise the dark,” modeling for us just the kind of radical gratitude we need in our literature, and in our lives right now.”
— James Crews, editor of Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection

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Ravenous

Perhaps I was already full

when Danny offered me

a sweet potato pancake

for breakfast, but there

he was with a bowl

of homemade batter

and a cast iron frying pan

hot on the stove, and so

I did what I longed to do,

I said yes, yes to feeding

a hunger that has little

to do with food—

the hunger for someone else

to offer you something

they’ve made, the joy of sharing

a meal together, the honor

of being served. The fact

that the pancake was delicious—

both sweet and hot—

was a bonus. The salsa

he handed me fiery—

fantastic as long friendship,

fierce as gratitude, as love.

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The duty of a musician is for us to take anything that happens on stage and make it part of the music.

—Herbie Hancock, Master Class

 

 

No wrong notes in jazz, said the musician

and the poet insisted, no wrong words.

No wrong leaf, said the tree,

and field said, no wrong grass.

No wrong time, promised the friend

and the river said, no wrong rock.

And the heart said, no wrong love,

but the mind said, no, that’s wrong.

And the wrong love replanted itself like grass

and grew wild in all the wrong places

like a gorgeous weed, like a tap-rooted song

until the whole field was beautifully wrong, wrong.

 

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One Hopeful

 

 

 

late-blooming lilac—

perhaps we, too, have something

marvelous about to flourish

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The wind, every day now, the

wind, the wind, the clamorous

wind, it lifts my dress and whips

my hair, the riotous wind, it

steals my words, unwinds my thoughts, the

demanding wind, the wilding wind, wind

that spreads fire, wind that unbranches the

cottonwood trees, the wind, the wind unlayers

me, invites me to find someplace still in me,

the wind, the relentless wind.

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Because you float—

that in itself is something

to admire. As we all know,

the world tries to sink us.

But you, buoyant and tough,

you carry us over cold water.

You act as a bumper when

we get too close to a rock,

to a wall, to a log. You move

at the river’s pace.

There are days, weeks,

I wish I could do what you do—

surround us with support,

make it fun, slip us

into the flow so easily

we can’t help but laugh,

even as our hearts

thump wild in our chests.

 

 

 

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But No Hiding

It is the job

of the wildfire

to crave ignition,

to seek more fuel,

to turn at the whim

of the wind.

The wildfire’s job

is to burn

whatever it meets,

to incite it to flame,

to not care what it chars

how it ashes.

I want to not see it

as it leaps and claims,

want to not smell it

as it fills my lungs,

becomes me,

want to not notice

the part of me

ready to burn.

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Every morning I walk into the garden,

even when there is little to see—only rows

of tiny sprouts and the earth just beginning to crack.

It is not so much that I speak to the seedlings,

though I do—to the slender green lashes

of carrots and the heart-shaped leaves of beans.

It is more that they speak to me in syllables

I feel through my fingers—speak of resilience

and tenderness, speak of the dark and beautiful

earth. There are so many days when I worry

that I am not doing enough—worry

that I could be more kind, more generous,

more loving, more vocal, more good.

But in the garden, pulling bindweed

and clover and salsify from the mostly empty rows,

all of my brokenness feels less broken.

It is somehow easier to forgive myself

for being who I am. And to mean it.

Easier to know myself as one of many.

Easier to believe that like the potato greens

I have so much more to offer that

can’t yet be seen, but it’s growing,

surely, deep in the darkness, it’s growing.

 

 

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