Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

For Eduardo

 

When Bruce Told Me He'd Brought You Your Hearing Aids
 

I thought, good, he can hear what the ICU nurses say.

Then I began to wish for another kind of hearing—

wished you could hear the faithful pumping

of your own loyal heart. Wished you could hear

the snow as it fell outside your window reminding you

of the silence beyond the beeps and alarms

of the hospital room. Wished you could hear

the hundreds of prayers being raised

and chanted for you. Wished you could hear my voice

as I whisper into the candle beside me

saying again and again your name, your name,

wished you could hear all the love rising for you

the way dawn rises, inevitable and beautiful,

the way sorrow gives rise to song.

Marie Luna

 

LET ME NOT INTRODUCE MY "SELF"

[In honor of teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, with gratitude]

Let me not introduce my "self"

Let me be the lichen on the rocks you sometimes notice

Before moving on to more interesting sights

Let me be the feathery plants in the water you briefly ponder

What is that? you wonder

I no longer want to be known or remembered

The burning youthful zeal to make a mark has faded

Like initials carved in the aspen as the dry bark shears off

I want to turn to powdery dust, separated from the core

Remember the elk teeth marks on the trees

A log of how high the snow was that winter

Chewing shrubbery and bark to survive

Did they make it through the lean times?

Remember bear cub claws cataloged in an aspen

Wonder about the fate of that bear

How many strawberries did she get to eat

That blissful summer with her mother?

My not self will be there, in the marks of the long gone.

-Marie Luna

Peter Waldor

 

Beginning Polyamory

Peter Waldor is a poet from New Jersey who, after many years of visiting, has made Telluride (CO) his home. We have become good friends and have spent many hours hiking or snowshoeing in the San Juan Mountain we both love (him far more than me). We have performed together and he has published many books to critical acclaim. He has a spate of new books coming out and I wanted to showcase some of the marvelous poems therein.

As I wrote to him after diving into the first of these newbies,  Beginning Polyamory.

I couldn't help dipping into Beginning Polyamory's first 50 pages

Just as some of your marvelous reviewers attest, I found the pieces

"like obsidian ... polished into jewels or napped to the keenest blade"

"concise, even abrupt" with "spare irony" both "elliptical and colloquial"

featuring a "peculiar plainspoken deliberateness" that is "trenchant" and "whimsical"

The Holiness of Lovemaking is serious and First Kiss humorous

Lifestyle is a deep truth

"I guess light or dark / can bring fruit to ripeness" -- YES!

Epistolary, Your Foot -- you capture brief snippets and make them funny, ironic

Dress and Good Luck -- expectations reversed

I especially loved Precipice with its great lines:

"and I can't think of a worse

curse than 'whatever,'

especially when said quietly,

with skill."

Backwards, Fouled It Up, Something Missing, Tee Shirts, Power-Sharing

full of quirky telling details and always fearlessly honest

Size Matters and Hardness maybe risque but so deliciously restrained at the same time

"soft as a rubber / pencil in a magic trick"

Gift of a Cigarette that adds an irrelevant last detail that completes the verisimilitude

Warden, Lovers and Friends, Fifty Years Later

Just a marvelous collection / lyric travelogue through the experience of polyamory