Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Poem of the Week, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Posted on by alisonmcghee

I’d love to see you in one (or both!) of our two remaining fall four-hour Zoom workshops: The Intuitive Leap on November 14, and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame, on November 17. Click here and scroll down for all the details.

We all walk around with a stone in our shoe, my writer friend G told me long ago, something I keep reminding myself of these days especially, as I watch people take sides, take sides, take sides, as if suffering and death are somehow more painful or more justified for some people than others.

We all hurt. We all hurt so much. We all carry so much, visible and not. There is no end of reasons to treat each other with great tenderness.

Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Is Not Breaking, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including the insects. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.

There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.

Click here for more information about poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Dog person versus cat person versus beer versus wine versus Gen Z versus baby boomers versus millennials versus Gen X versus The Greatest Generation versus red states versus blue states versus New England versus Midwest versus West versus North versus South versus pro versus anti.

Categorization makes me tense. Can’t I love both dogs and cats? (I do.) Can’t I be a novelist and a poet and a picture book writer? (I am.) Why do any of us have to be this and not that? Someone profits by having us believe it’s a good thing to divide, slot, label and categorize, and it’s not us. I love blurred lines and this poem for the same reason.

Where We Are Headed, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

At first we just say flower. How
thrilling it is to name. Then it’s
aster. Begonia. Chrysanthemum.

We spend our childhood learning
to separate one thing from another.
Daffodil. Edelweiss. Fern. We learn

which have five petals, which have six.
We say, “This is a gladiolus, this hyacinth.”
And we fracture the world into separate

identities. Iris. Jasmine. Lavender.
Divorcing the world into singular bits.
And then, when we know how to tell

one thing from another, perhaps
at last we feel the tug to see not
what makes things different, but

what makes things the same. Perhaps
we feel the pleasure that comes
when we start to blur the lines—

and once again everything
is flower, and by everything,
I mean everything.


For more information on Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, please check out her website.

alisonmcghee.com