Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Rosemerry at the Gunnison Valley Poetry Festival (2018)
[photo by Art Goodtimes]

Rosemerry is an amazing friend, poet, storyteller and wise woman. Her latest book All the Honey (Samara Press, 2023) is a classic. If you're looking for one book of poetry to buy for the holidays, let me recommend this one.

She has a poem-a-day practice that she shares with folks. I find it invaluable -- uplifting, insightful, spiritually important.

Love Lessons

 

There were thousands of wild iris

in the wide, damp meadow.

Forty years later I remember it, still,

the pale purple petals fluttering

in the morning breeze.

The spring air was cold;

my feet squished in the mud,

and I picked armfuls of iris,

each bloom the loveliest.

I picked and picked

as if dozens of iris could convey

how extravagantly I loved a boy.

Loved him beyond measure.

Loved him meadowfuls.

Whole mountainfuls.

It’s so human to long to express

the inexpressible.

Forty years later, I remember

the immensity of that love—

how it changed me, made space in me

for who I am today.

Love is, perhaps, rhizomic,

like iris, spreading where no one can see.

If you could look inside me now,

you’d find fields of iris, infinite acres.

I still long to pick dozens for my loves,

even hundreds, though now I also trust

how sometimes a single stem

says everything.

I especially love  Love Lessons because my eldest daughter's name is Iris

One Sacredness

an altar for wonder—

that small pause

before you speak

Her short poems dive deep

After a Rogue Hard Frost in Late June

The usual suspects wilt and die.

Basil, of course, and beans. Potatoes.

Zinnias. Nasturtiums. Marigolds.

I find myself staring at the beet greens,

spinach, and arugula, marveling

at how they thrive, impervious to cold.

 

I have a craving for resilience.

I pull the dark leaves to my mouth,

devour the green communion.

It tastes like survival, so bitter, so bright.

Her poems of the natural world are full of awe

Tonight I Remember

how he resisted learning

to tie his own shoes,

how I cheered

when he learned

to pinch the laces

between his fingers,

knotting and looping

and pulling them tight,

making a bow

that would stay.

How I encouraged

the very thing

that allowed him

to walk away.

Oh, sweet woman

I was then,

beginning to learn

letting go.

Now that he’s gone,

I’m a student

of being loosened,

untied, undone,

still practicing

how to let him go.

And her poems of grief are truly transformative.

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