Dear Dad, I surprised a fisherman this week
when I asked him what he was hoping to catch.
Trout, he said, at least I am wish.
His English was halting, but our smiles connected.
You taught me, that, Dad, how two strangers
can easily connect on a shore or a pier.
It takes so little, really. A small question
opens us to our common humanness and
can lead to easy warmth. Last night I was walking
alone in the dark and noticed a small,
strange glowing in the leaves. And there
on the road, another small glow.
Pulling out a flashlight, I discovered
the shine belonged to a black sluggish
beetle creature, such an unlikely source of light—
a creature I would never have noticed
had it not been night. How often
do I look at someone or something
else and fail to see their glow?
So today in the airport, I looked for it, and
found the glow in the face of the man who looked up
from his paper at 4:35 a.m. to toss me
a radiant grin. Saw it in the young girl
dancing giddy circles around her grandma.
Though it was dark out, how much light
in Concourse A did I miss, eager as I was to get
to my gate on time? Next time, another chance
to imagine the concourse is not so different
from the edge of a lake and our carry-on bags
not so different from tackle boxes. Who knows,
I might catch delight in line. At least,
as my new friend said, I am wish.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Posts Tagged ‘airport’
Chance Meeting
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, bioluminescence, dad, fisherman, light, meeting the world, strangers on October 16, 2026| 2 Comments »
Among Strangers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, beauty, rainbow, strangers, travel on July 25, 2026| 8 Comments »
I sat for hours in concourse A,
the plane delayed, delayed again,
surrounded by a young mother
with three hungry children and two
elderly couples who played endless
rounds of go fish and men in dark suits
on their cell phones and girls filming
dances for TikTok, when I looked up
and saw out the window a double rainbow,
ridiculously pretty against the slate sky,
and not wanting to be alone in my joy,
I touched the arm of the boy beside me
and he leaped up and ran to the window,
and all of us stopped to point or smile
or make jokes about pots of gold.
We will never see each other again,
but for a moment, we stood together
at the edge of delight, and the rainbows,
they just kept getting brighter, and I thought
it couldn’t possibly get any more lovely.
And the boy smiled at me. And then it did.
The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, connection, love, trust on June 23, 2025| 12 Comments »
The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World
It was the boy at baggage claim who started it.
His elation! Each time a new bag would drop,
he would point at the suitcase and squeal,
then turn to his grandmother with incandescent delight.
His grandmother deepened my joy. How she beamed
at her grandson, praised him in Spanish, her words
a bright blur I interpreted more through hunch
than through certainty. And sooner than you’d think,
I fell in love with every single person at baggage claim sixteen.
Didn’t need to know their stories to know
they were worthy of love. Everyone a grandchild.
Everyone a light. It was like, how on these midsummer
nights, the late sun shines long though the cities and fields
and everything, every whole and broken thing, is beautiful.
Oh, people of Iran. Israel. Palestine. Ukraine.
Russia. Somalia. Yemen. America. I will never know you,
yet I honor how you carry inside you your own strange
and beautiful spark. Each of us longs to belong.
No matter what our leaders do, the light is right
to see how much we all long to be safe, to be seen,
to be kind, to be trusted, to meet on any street,
in any room, all of us slivers of divinity.
After Six Days of Holding It Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, daughter, grief, impermanence, parents, poem, poetry, tears, vulnerability on July 25, 2019| 9 Comments »
It wasn’t until I had passed through security
and found my way into Concourse B
that I found myself sinking into a chair
across from a giant Vienna Beef poster
and began to weep. And once they began,
the tears wouldn’t stop. Nor did I try
to stop them. I had wondered in the ICU
where they were. Had wondered
again at my parents’ home. It was strange
to be so level—not cold, really, and not numb,
but oddly steeled. It was a relief, really,
to sob into my hands. To let grief take over.
To be a maidservant to fragility.
What a gift to be sideswiped with the truth
of our vulnerability. What a blessing
to be baptized in my own helplessness.
Over the loudspeaker, they announced
that a plane was delayed. As if any of us
really know when we’ll depart, when we’ll arrive.
When the tears dried, I stood. Walked
to my gate recalibrated. Called my parents
again because I could. Because I could.
In the window, I smiled at my watery reflection,
how it almost wasn’t there at all.
In the Airport
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, kindness, mother, poem, poetry, strangers, tenderness, travel on July 20, 2019| 10 Comments »
I wonder who else today
in Concourse A
is traveling to see their mom
in the hospital, who else
has a parent with a surgery
gone wrong? Who else
could use some tenderness—
perhaps that woman in green
on the transporter? Or maybe
the young mother chasing her child
on the moving walkway? Or
the middle-aged man deliberating
over snacks? Today, it seems
so obvious that all of us
need some tenderness—
regardless our story.
And so when the man
in 31 C offers to lift my suitcase
and fit it somehow
into the overhead bin,
I almost weep with relief,
but instead I smile and say
Thank you, yes, I need help.
All day, I think of how
one small generosity changes
the landscape of the heart.
All day, I am met with chances
to be grateful, to be kind.
The Gate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, beauty, connection, humanity, poem, poetry, travel on June 21, 2018| 6 Comments »
It was Concourse B that altered me
as I ran past old women in sarongs
and young wailing children and men
in red ties and couples holding hands.
At first, all humanity felt like a hindrance,
living hurdles between me
and gate B-14 where the plane
for Seattle was already boarding.
But then, and who can say why,
as I stitched past B-70, B-68, B-66,
I began to notice how beautiful they were,
the ones with dark briefcases and the ones
with strollers, tall ones and fat ones and
slight ones and crooked ones,
all of us constellating in the same place
at the same time, star dust
with dreams and goals and heartaches
and hopes. And as I wove through
the fabric of us,
I felt their blessing as they parted
to let me through,
and I blessed them, too,
with a thousand silent thank yous,
astonished at how different we are,
how very much the same.
At the Airport
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, goodbye, poem on December 30, 2015| 2 Comments »
the little boy
with a backpack
bigger than he is
stands in line
behind the red rope
his tears follow me
through the exit door
to the car parked
in the no parking zone,
on my own cheeks
I taste them