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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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Poetry News

Four Poems of Love, Loss, Grief, and Grace

published in ONE ART

by rosemerryt@gmail.com February 22, 2022
February 22, 2022

https://oneartpoetry.com/2022/02/22/four-poems-by-rosemerry-wahtola-trommer/

Grief, love, and gratitude. That’s the essence of the last six months, the essence of these four poems published in ONE ART–the first poems I’ve sent out about meeting the loss of my son. Thank you to Mark Danowsky for publishing them on Twosday (2/22/22), a day that Finn would have celebrated. Poetry has been a saving grace–reading it, writing it, talking about it. For all who love, for all who have lost or will lose a loved one, I hope these poems find resonance. We are not yet done with our loving.

 

After Reading a Romance at Midnight

For two hours, I am the woman
who works at the orphanage, the woman
who falls in love with a man from India
who is not who he says he is.
He and I make love for hours beneath a mirror,
twining our limbs in a sea of silk,
and he shows me the pleasure
of losing the stories I’ve told myself
about what is possible with love.
When, after many pages,
we arrive at happily ever after,
I find myself on the couch in my kitchen,
notice my own thick legs curled beneath me,
my own raw heart in my tired chest
doing its faithful work. I’m surprised
to return to my own story:
the woman who is grieving—
the woman alone
in the empty room who listens
for the voice that isn’t there,
who listens for footsteps that do not come.
For the last two hours, I had forgotten her,
had forgotten this woman
whose story I know as my own,
this woman who lost her son.
I had forgotten the ache she carries,
the constant throb. And though it cuts,
though it wounds,
I am so grateful to return to her life,
to her story—the story
of how she gave her everything
to someone she loved,
how she knows he loved her, too.
It’s not a story she had wanted to live,
but now that it’s hers
she would never give up a page
of their story. Not a single word.

*

My Son’s First Word

He pointed at the grass
beneath the cottonwood tree
and said “dado.”
Shadow? I asked.
Not ball, not mama,
not cat, not dad.
Shadow.
Already at one,
he was aware of both
what is and what isn’t here—
how sometimes the light
is intercepted.
After Finn died, I dreamt
a young boy taught me
how I could help my son’s
transformation by
guiding his energy
through the shadow
of a total eclipse,
a golden corona flaming
about the circumference.
All night, certain I was awake,
I pulled luminous swirls
through the dark center, and
Finn’s energy disappeared
into the heart of the shadow,
into the light beyond.
A shadow is nothing,
of course, which is to say
it is also everything. The way
my life is now steeped
in the shadow of his life,
the way the shape of him
follows me everywhere I go.

*

Today I Realize

I can still call your phone
and hear your voice mail.
And so I do, I call it,
and the low tones
of your familiar voice
reach all the way in
and squeeze my lungs.
This is you know who.
We are you know where.
Leave your you know what
you know when.
I hang up at the beep,
and then I’m gasping,
choking, making sounds
I don’t recognize.
And then the house is quiet.
The ache is like a time lapse
of a rose in bloom—
first clenched, then
opening and opening
and impossibly opening,
then fading, then dropping away.
Every day a new bouquet
of ways I miss you.
Today, I miss the deep
song of your voice,
how it opens in me
fragrant, like home.

*

Revival

The day your son died, the person you were died, too.
         —Mirabai Starr

Death came to her
as a blue sky day,
as a feral scream,
as an ambulance
with no need
for its siren.
Death came to her
saying, “Ma’am,
you don’t want
to see your son
this way.” Death
knew what it
was doing when
it erased everything
she’d thought
about how to meet
a day, when it scraped
her of who
she had been
and left her barren.
It was habit
that made her
brush her teeth,
routine that helped
her drive the car.
But it was life itself
that inspirited
her, slipping
like starlight
into her every
dark cell, life itself
that whispered
to her death-bent heart,
You are not done
yet with your
loving.

1
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Praise for Rosemerry

Wow, what a great response to both your reading and workshop.

Almost with tears in their eyes. Really. I have to tell you what was most mentioned as your fans applauded you; your family life, your reactions and theirs; it felt and sounded so real and most all of us have children so we all could relate. Unforgettable, you are.

Kathy Berg
Cortez Public Library, Poetry Corner Presents

Rosemerry, thank you.

For the first time in a long time I was moved to be creative and to use writing as a tool for healing. I could feel my stagnation begin to melt away in the Light that was presented today. I’ve been freeing up some space lately and asking that it be filled with people and things that inspire me to be the best version of myself and that is exactly what happened today.

Jackie
workshop participant

Revel in your own creativity.

To participate in one of Rosemerry’s poetry playshops, or to listen to one of her beautiful presentations, is an invitation to revel in your own creativity. She welcomes her audience into a landscape of words with a generous and irrepressible spirit, and speaks with a boundless compassion. Her love of poetry reaches out and connects with her listeners, opening a space with her audience that invites them to consider themselves, and their art, and their world, in new ways. To hear Rosemerry share her poetry is a felt gift. Her listeners cannot escape being touched.

Melissa Stacey
co-founder and organizer, Writers and Scribblers Literary Retreat

I think you have shifted the consciousness of my entire client base.

For this, and many other things, I thank you. You are perhaps the most professional person I’ve ever worked with. I’m amazed.

Craig Soren Nielson
Rural Community Assistance Corporation

Insightful, energizing, and entertaining.

Rosemerry, thank you so much for your inspirational program. The members of the American Business Women’s Association in Montrose left with fresh ideas on improving their work-a-day world and smiles on their faces.

Mavis Bennett
President, American Business Women’s Association, Black Canyon Charter Chapter

Through poetry, humor & song, Rosemerry brings the room to life.

Her highly interactive approach gives each child the opportunity to become a participant in a beautiful, creative experiment. With the support of Rosemerry, children are allowed to shine, to sing, to be silly – to be themselves, and everyone in the room leaves with the knowledge that living in this space of openness is always a possibility.

Erika Gordon
Coordinator for enrichment programming, Ridgway Elementary School

An extraordinary teacher and gifted poet.

Rosemerry’s talents have helped me achieve my dream of more publication. But what is most important to me is that I have learned to write with more confidence and understand more about how to craft deeper poems about deeper subjects. I have experienced healing, safety, trust, and fun in working with Rosemerry. When I bring a poem to her, I know she will continue to find ways to help me expand my creative potential. She never runs out of great ideas.

Phyllis Klein

An amazing talent to open up people’s creative minds.

There is some kind of magic in your smile, your encouraging energy, and amazing talent to open up people’s creative minds. You have facilitated a bit of a renaissance in our building. I have felt warm, enthusiastic vibes from even some of our more reserved teachers today. Of course, the students have it now and are exuding the joy of words big time.

Vicki Phelps
4th and 6th grade science teacher, Naturita Elementary School

Rosemerry touched their hearts.

Our students and staff benefited so much from Rosemerry’s visit. In just one afternoon of writing with her, people were surprised at how much they learned about their writing and their own process. She created a safe place where people were willing to risk. And the performance: Wow. I’ll never think of a sonnet the same again. Rosemerry has a way of grabbing the audience and delivering poetry in a way that makes it feel urgent and fun. As one woman said, ‘In my work, I just touch the surface of people. Rosemerry touches their hearts.’

Ruth Hackford-Peer
Associate Director of Student Life, Adams State College

A Better Place

The world is a better place because of Trommer’s poems.

Colorado Central Magazine
cozine.com/2018-september/book-review-naked-for-tea/

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