Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: "Perhaps It Would Eventually Erode, But ... "

That rock that we
have been pushing up
the hill—that one

that keeps rolling back down
and we keep pushing
back up—what if

we stopped? We are not
Sisyphus. This rock
is not a punishment.

It’s something we’ve chosen
to push. Who knows why.
I look at all the names

we once carved into
its sedimentary sides.
How important

I thought they were,
those names. How
I’ve clung to labels,

who’s right, who’s wrong,
how I’ve cared about
who’s pushed harder

and who’s been slack.
Now all I want
is to let the rock

roll back to where it belongs,
which is wherever it lands,
and you and I could,

imagine!, walk unencumbered,
all the way to the top and
walk and walk and never stop

except to discover what
our hands might do
if for once they were no longer

pushing.



"Perhaps It Would Eventually Erode, But ... " by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. © Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Reprinted by permission of the poet. Visit the poet's blog, where she posts a poem a day.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown artist.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: "The Way It Is"

Over and over we break
open, we break and
we break and we open.
For a while, we try to fix
the vessel—as if
to be broken is bad.
As if with glue and tape
and a steady hand we
might bring things to perfect
again. As if they were ever
perfect. As if to be broken is not
also perfect. As if to be open
is not the path toward joy.

The vase that’s been shattered
and cracked will never
hold water. Eventually
it will leak. And at some
point, perhaps, we decide
that we’re done with picking
our flowers anyway, and no
longer need a place to contain them
We watch them grow just
as wildflowers do—unfenced,
unmanaged, blossoming only
when they’re ready—and mygod,
how beautiful they are amidst
the mounting pile of shards.

 
"The Way It Is" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. © Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Reprinted by permission of the poet. Visit the poet's blog, where she posts a poem a day.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer, perhaps associated with this source.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: "Treasure Hunt in the Woods"

 

But after three steps into the evergreen shade,
he drops to his knees and begins to furrow.
It’s here, mama, he says. Let’s dig.
I pick up a knobby spruce twig and poke absently at dirt,
          hoping we can start walking again.
                    No, mama, like this. With your hands.
I pretend I don’t hear.
He takes my hands in his own, forces them down.
Fine sand runs through my fingers,
old spruce needles swim in it like unstrung commas.
I settle in, sifting and digging up dirt. Making piles.
No mama, deeper than that, he says,
                    scratching with his nails into the hardpan.
I dig deeper, past my desire to keep my hands clean.
Past whatever I had set out to do. Treasure is cold
                    and filled with crooked things that slip through fingers.

"Treasure Hunt in the Woods" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Published on the poet's blog, November 26, 2007. © Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer (originally color).

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: "Guilty Bystander"

[Poet's note: "This Christmas [2010], my six-year-old son taught me the lesson of how valuable it can be to pay attention—a found poem."]
 

 

The gate of heaven is everywhere.

—Thomas Merton, “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”

“I don’t know,”
says Finn,
and I forget

what that first

question was,
but speaking

into the microphone

of the karaoke machine,
I then asked him,

“What do you know

for sure?”
And he says

into his mic,

“If you only
ask Santa

for one present,

he’ll bring it to you.”
I ask him,

“What else do you know?”

The reverb knob
is turned to max

so his quick answer

bounces around
the room, “Sometimes

nothing can be true.”

So I ask him,
“What else?”

and he says,

“The world
changes.”

"Guilty Bystander" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Published online at Virtual Teahouse, the poet's blog, on December 25, 2010.

Photography credit: Image by unknown photographer, found at this link (originally color).

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: "Before We Can Unlearn"

So far it’s the physical world that we speak of:
the red Frisbee, the sweet blackberry, the small pink ball.
She points to a tree. This, she says. Tree. I say. Well,
lilac bush. Already the world slips from its chain of syllables.
I want to speak with her about this filtered honey light
of a late April afternoon, and I do, but she brings me
a rock and says, This. And I say, Rock. Gray rock.
And even more, I want to speak of what comes next,
of the longing that this light begets—how it rouses in me
a deep wish to lose the physical world and be current,
be wave, be invisible flourish, to be warmth that drives flowers
to bloom. I want to tell her how sometimes the body
interferes, so material, so fleshsome, so brute in its hungers.
How beyond the red Frisbee there’s a pulse, a rhythm,
a tide that no words can touch, and it gathers us and connects
us to this all that is: one cosmos, one bloodstream, one river,
one art. How sometimes we get it—whatever it is—and all
that is concrete dissolves in the breath. How we’re twined
to this moment, and the next, and the next. Nest, I say,
as she brings me the small wreath of grass. Bird, I say,
as the small body wings past. She smiles and tries to fly—
half jump, half fall, all innocence. Yes, I say. That’s what
love is like. Oh golden light. Oh luminous task of losing
whatever we think we know: Tree. Rock. Nest.

"Before We Can Unlearn" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Posted by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on Virtual Teahouse, 4/9/2010.  

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: "Action Plan"

Consider the yellow post-it pad
before the pen riddles it blue.

Blank. Stack of blank.
Stack of yellow blank with glue.
Pray that blank might stick to you.
Imagine you might enter rooms
with so little plan of your own.
To be the slate, not the list,
the void, not the litany of Things To Do.
To cultivate an emptiness.
To let whatever's next
come next.

"Action Plan" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. No further bibliographic information available.

Photography credit: Unknown.