There are cups on my shelf
I will never use—
cups that will never hold tea
nor water nor coffee.
It brings me such joy
they are there, though,
filled, as they are,
with memories.
Perhaps this is how
I begin to teach
the thirstiest parts of me
that a cup without something
tangible in it
is not always empty.
Posts Tagged ‘memory’
Ode to the Empty Cup
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cup, emptiness, memory, thirst on May 3, 2023| 12 Comments »
What Goes Unspoken
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, sexual assault, speaking out on February 10, 2023| 40 Comments »
Hi friends–before you read the poem, a little note about content.
It’s Teen Love & Consent week here in Telluride, and lots of difficult conversations are happening about statistics and setting boundaries. At the same time, some difficult news about teen sexual assault has been in our local papers. And so this poem was born. Because it’s so far out of the realm of my normal content, I wanted to give you the ability to not read the poem. It’s not graphic, but it’s not easy to read either. It’s farther down the page.
I realize as I send this what a roller coaster you signed up for when you subscribed to the daily poems, and I thank you for meeting me every day with the all of it. It means so much to me, your presence, thank you.
with great respect,
Rosemerry
What Goes Unspoken
with gratefulness for the girls who spoke out
On the table, the tulips are opening,
splaying in effortless pink delight,
an homage to how soft things can bring so much pleasure,
and I think of how you once scolded me for picking flowers,
saying it was better to leave them as they were.
That was years ago,
when I traveled to see you on Cape Cod.
You were a tennis pro
and I was the girl who thought I could come to love you.
I had gone for a walk in the woods
and picked you a small bouquet.
Violets, perhaps, and something small and white.
I didn’t know then that I was a tulip.
We’d flirted. You seemed kind.
I never thought you would—
never imagined I was—
never dreamt when I said no you wouldn’t—
Mostly I left my body.
I remember staring at the windowsill while you—
I’d put the flowers in a jar. They were purple and white.
How could you defend the flowers and yet—
I didn’t open for you and you cut—
I was a stem when I left.
It’s been years since I remembered you,
but there was an article in the paper this week
about a boy here who—
Eleven girls spoke out.
How many girls did you—
I never said a word.
I have a girl now, too.
One Everywhere
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christmas tree, loss, memory on January 17, 2023| 6 Comments »
like Christmas tree needles
still appearing long after the tree is gone—
these memories of you
When Mom Suggests I Could Rest My Head in Her Lap
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fish, memory, mom, rest, time on December 14, 2022| 8 Comments »
I resist. There is so much to do,
but soon my eyes are closed
and Mom is pulling her fingers
through my hair the way I love
and I am ten again, or four,
or twenty-five, or two,
lying on the plaid couch
in our old house
with my head in Mom’s lap,
her fingers in my hair.
I wake up drenched in forever,
this timeless stream
I sometimes can see for what it is—
like a fish that leaps for a fly
and sees, oh! an infinite world
beyond the world it knows.
Is it any wonder, this water
clinging to my cheek
as I rise from the couch
and swim back into the night.
In the Look
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bunny, gaze, memory, rabbit, seeing, watching on November 27, 2022| 7 Comments »
A bunny knows when it’s being watched,
as if attention itself has a weight.
As if it feels my stare like a rush,
like a threatening hand, like a stroke.
But when I graze the bunny
with a brush of a glance
and with half-lidded eyes,
my body faintly angled to the side,
the bunny will bear
the gravity of my notice
and I may watch all I want
as it nibbles and twitches,
hops and rests.
And so it is I learn to meet my past
with a softened gaze, with gauzy eyes,
to meet a memory slant.
The memories let me linger now,
increasingly unskittish.
I do not try to touch them.
They multiply like rabbits.
That Beautiful Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, beauty, boat, grief, memory, mother, origami, river, son on October 12, 2022| 7 Comments »
Memory of sitting by the river,
you taking my picture,
the leaves around us
already changing—
you were happy that day,
camera in hand,
no hint of sorrow,
no augury of grief.
Oh, that beautiful day.
I fold it in half,
run my finger down the crease,
unfold it, rotate it ninety degrees
and fold it in half again.
In six more steps,
I’ve folded it neatly into a boat.
Someday, perhaps,
I will float it down the river.
Today, I tuck it
into my mind’s back pocket.
When I need to, I touch it,
run my fingers along the folds.
It carries me along
the current.
Poem in Silver Birch Press
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, memory, new york city on October 9, 2022| 4 Comments »
I am grateful to have a poem in Silver Birch Press’s ONE GOOD MEMORY series. When my friend Phyllis first told me about the series, I immediately thought of this memory of my father … place can be so powerful. Thanks to Silver Birch Press for publishing “Walking 5th Avenue”:
Walking 5th Avenue
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
I am again fifteen
with my father,
my first trip to New York,
and he is not yet
in life-changing pain,
and we stare
in store windows,
eat street pretzels
and look for sales racks.
I don’t know yet
how he will hurt
too much to walk,
how even standing
will become impossible.
No, in this memory
we are walking
and laughing
as if we will forever,
as if there won’t
be a morning
when I wake in New York
almost four decades later
and reach to call him
and thank him
for that long-ago trip,
only to remember
he can no longer
answer the phone.
All day, I hear his laughter
as I walk. All day,
I feel his hand
reaching for mine.
Meeting the Memories
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, memory on October 5, 2022| 2 Comments »
Sometimes a memory arrives
with its own soundtrack—
in this case a woman’s choir
repeating again and again the words
deep peace. Sometimes a memory
comes with instructions for locations,
for instance: Best remembered
while walking alone in autumn leaves.
Or perhaps: Don’t remember
while on the phone with an insurance agent.
Sometimes a memory asks you to feed it.
It asks for ice cream, for chai tea,
for black bean soup. It asks to feast
on hours of undivided time.
Sometimes a memory convinces you
it is more than a memory. Proves
it is a part of you. Like breath.
Like tears. Like skin. Like your heart.
At the High School Reunion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, friends, high school, meeting the self, memory, self on July 31, 2022| 9 Comments »
The whole time I drove the three-hundred thirteen miles
and thirty-five years back in time,
wondering why I was doing it,
I could not have pictured who I would meet:
one friend now career military
and a yoga instructor.
Another who owned a non-toxic sex toy store
and became a therapist.
Another who is sober but sells margaritas in Vegas.
A long-haired man who had a kundalini awakening.
And a long-haired woman who looks exactly like me,
who once lived in this town and took school so seriously
and sang in the choir and acted in plays
and picked up every lucky penny she ever found
and kept them in her shoes
like a portable bank of good fortune.
I was most surprised,
perhaps, to meet her again.
Not that I don’t remember how awkward she was,
how she didn’t fit in. Even tonight,
I watch with amusement
as she stands at the edge of the crowd.
It is easy to be gentle with her,
to love her now in a way I couldn’t
have loved her then.
Perhaps because now I know
being nerdy will save her,
and it will not matter at all in thirty-five years
that she was not invited to parties.
Look at her tonight, laughing with people
who barely spoke to her all those years ago.
Look at her, hugging her friend as he tells her
how he felt so bullied back then and was sure
the whole school was against him.
How little she knew of his world.
How little she knew of her own.
I would like to get to know her better
as I drive with her back home.
Parka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged coat, grief, memory on February 6, 2022| 10 Comments »
Each time I go out now, I wear my son’s coat,
sleeves too long, the whole coat too big,
and I remember how the thin blue down
hung from his slender frame, too,
remember how he wore it to school,
when we skied, when we shoveled the drive,
when we skated on the pond.
To wear his coat is to remember he is gone.
To wear his coat is to remember he is here,
here in the way I carry him with me
everywhere I go—not in the coat,
but here in the fibers of my heart
where every conversation we ever had is woven.
Where every memory—even the times
when he said he hated me, even the times
when he pushed against rules, even
the time he told his sister about Santa—
every memory is threaded into my blood.
I know now what it is to meet the cold
without a coat. With my whole body,
I know what it is to meet the night.
To wear his coat is to feel him close.
To wear his coat is to feel how there is
another coat I wear on the inside: A coat I couldn’t
take off if I tried. A coat no one else can see.
A coat of love that fits
as if it were made for me.
Hand Me Downs from My Best Friend’s Mom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gift, homage, legacy, memory, self-knowledge on January 7, 2022| 12 Comments »
for Janet Kaye Schoeberlein, March 26, 1930-Dec. 28, 2021
When I was fourteen, Jan gave me her flannel nightgowns,
the long white ones with tiny blue flowers
that I had admired on her for years.
When I wore them, I wore
the classical music always playing
in the background in her home.
I wore the high tilting treble of her voice
as she sang around the campfire.
I wore her world class hiccups that always
seemed to arrive when she didn’t approve
of what was about to happen.
I wore desert river adventures
and trips to the theater downtown
and dinners with foods I’d never tried before.
And though I didn’t know it then,
I wore the past of her childhood in Germany,
and her memory of how she graduated law school
as the only woman in her class.
I wore her willingness to raise her young nephew
and her joy in raising her daughter
and the way she always said my name
as if I were a south American flower.
Those nightgowns, I took their shape,
loved the way their soft cloth swirled
around my body, wrapping me in eccentricity.
I still wear the other hand me downs she gave me—
Curiosity. Independence. Individuality.
Because she was so herself,
she taught me I could trust myself to be me.
She was the queen of oddness,
a model of uniqueness,
an archetype of being true.
To this day I feel these qualities
swirl around me, too—
the comfort of her integrity
the warmth of her generosity,
the way Jan was so very, very Jan.
Walking 5th Avenue
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, grief, memory, New York on December 4, 2021| 8 Comments »
I am again fifteen
with my father,
my first trip to New York,
and he is not yet
in life-changing pain,
and we stare
in store windows,
eat street pretzels
and look for sales racks.
I don’t know yet
how he will hurt
too much to walk,
how even standing
will become impossible.
No, in this memory
we are walking
and laughing
as if we will forever,
as if there won’t
be a morning
when I wake in New York
almost four decades later
and reach to call him
and thank him
for that long ago trip,
only to remember
he can no longer
answer the phone.
All day, I hear his laughter
as I walk. All day,
I feel his hand
reaching for mine.
Potica
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bread, daughter, food, grandmother, memory, parents on July 23, 2021| 2 Comments »
Sitting in Colorado
I think of my parents sitting
in Illinois,
how tonight in different
kitchens together we savor
the Slovenian sweet bread
of my father’s childhood,
the sweet bread
his mother would make—
savor not just the taste
but the memory of the taste,
the paper thin crust,
the ground walnuts,
the honey.
Savor not just the loaf
but the memory of the hands
that once made the loaf,
the happiness as we ate it,
the communion in the joy.
Tonight, I break the bread
into tiny pieces, eat it slow,
imagine us at the same
loving table now
and years and years ago.
We are alone, not alone.
The bread tastes
like family, like home.
If you are unfamiliar with this Eastern European nutroll delicacy (pronounced puh-TEET-suh), you can read more about it here.
Crashing into the Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, garden, high school, memory on July 1, 2021| 7 Comments »
for Marne
And though we have not spoken
in over thirty years, today I invite
the memory of my friend to walk
with me in the garden.
That girl would laugh
to learn I’ve become a woman
who weeds, who waters, who grows.
We were uncultivated together,
unrooted, unmanicured,
and blossoming anyway,
windblown and wandering and wild.
I bring that sweet madness now
into the tidy rows and marvel
at how things change.
For a moment, I am running with her
over a hill and spinning
and crashing and laughing.
For a moment, I am again that girl
who is more dream than flesh,
more wish than should, more
me than I ever could be.
How beautiful the song of that memory,
how it rhymes even now with whatever
is green in me.
Even now, I am running,
spinning, crashing, though anyone looking
at the garden might think
I am peacefully deadheading flowers,
talking to the spinach,
painstakingly pulling the weeds.
Review: Memory of a Night in Taos
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, memory, review, taos on March 19, 2021| 2 Comments »
for AOI
Unforgettable nights! The sun was committed
to great service, shining low and golden.
Impressive wide variety of laughter,
and the high-quality conversation
made me as if I belonged in my skin.
I don’t remember a thing I ate
or where I stayed or even much of what
we said. Mostly, I remember
walking the large selection
of quiet side streets, grinning,
feeling lucky to be alive,
and you whistling flawless and clear.
Atmosphere: Usually I’d say five stars,
but truly there were at least
two thousand stars visible,
and I’d use them all for this memory review
in which I first met you.
Only complaint, the weekend ran out of time.
Highly recommended to remember again,
especially the way our smiles slipped
from something we practiced
to something immeasurably true.
Winter Evening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, friendship, grace, laughter, memory on November 21, 2020| 4 Comments »
Though I sit alone
on my couch at home,
I’m somehow also sitting
with Rachel and Julie
and it’s summer and
we’re laughing, laughing
until we tumble
into each other’s laps,
laughing as we collapse
into a puppy pile of giggles,
laughing because it feels
so good to laugh—
even now I laugh aloud
with no memory of why
we were laughing then,
but many years later,
it’s still contagious.
Sometimes we tumble
so wholly into the grace
of a moment
that it opens in us forever,
continuously blooms
and spreads its perfume
like night-blooming jasmine,
christens everything
with its fragrance,
even this empty room,
even this tired woman
now so surprisingly awake.
Clear Instruction
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, purity, snow, thirst, water on October 26, 2020| 2 Comments »
Tonight my daughter
closes her fist
around the first snow
squeezes to make it
into a small cold ball
the shape of her hand,
and then offers it to me.
It tastes like sky,
like electric charge,
like winter, like childhood,
like curiosity.
And once again
I’m a girl who walks
to the neighbor’s yard
for a drink at the well—
I pump the heavy lever
and it draws clean, clear water
from the ground.
There’s a red metal ladle
hanging from a nail
on a nearby tree,
and the water tastes of moss
and rust and freedom.
There is a thirst
that’s been bequeathed us—
a thirst for what is
untreated and pure,
a thirst I somehow
manage to forget.
If it could speak,
the thirst might say,
Remember, remember,
remember.
Not the What but the How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, memory, time on April 15, 2020| 4 Comments »
Mostly, we forget.
Mostly, the singular moments
that felt so important—
remarkable, even—
slip like raindrops
into a pond.
Most of my life
is blur, is watercolor.
But let me clearly remember
tonight, dying my daughter’s
hair blue, singing along
to the radio, laughing
about nothing in particular.
What I want to remember
is how little it takes
to make a moment light up
from within, light up
like dew infused by the sun—
each moment a teacher,
our own home the temple.
The Night Before Thanksgiving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, memory, poem, poetry, self image, sister, thanksgiving on November 27, 2019| 2 Comments »
Forty years later, my brother and I
go to the Jewel to buy evaporated milk
and egg nog, and part of me doubts
I will remember the way that we scoured
the produce aisle for green beans. Then again,
who could say why I remember
with incredible clarity the moments
when I was ten and we had just finished
the great turkey feast and my brother and I,
as we loved to do, asked to be excused,
but instead of leaving the dining room,
we simply lay on the floor beneath the table
with our feet up on our chairs
and conversed with each other
there across the green and white shag.
I don’t recall what we said or what we wore,
and it was no important moment, but
I remember the feel of it:
I knew we were together in this—
this moment, this family, this life,
so much so that forty years later
the memory of these ten minutes
is as real to me as the scent of the pumpkin pie
my sister-in-law baked tonight.
How is it that such a short snippet of time
defines us? How it comes to be
the moment we return to again and again
to remind ourselves who we are,
who we love, and why we are here—
those moments, stolen, and still
they give us back ourselves. Even now
in the produce aisle of Jewel, I can feel it—
the carpet against my cheek, can smell
the cranberry salad, can hear my grandfather
and grandmother laughing over our heads,
my brother’s eyes widening, mischievous, so alive.
One Scent Memory
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, poem, poetry, pumpkin on October 24, 2019| 4 Comments »