POETS’ CORNER: ROSEMERRY FOR APRIL FOOL’S DAY

31 Mar POETS’ CORNER: ROSEMERRY FOR APRIL FOOL’S DAY

Editor’s Note: Here’s another poem in an ongoing series by Telluride Inside… and Out’s favorite Word Woman, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

Though April is the Cruelest Month

Weather is usually safe.
You can say something like,

“You won’t believe it! It snowed here
a foot! We can hardly get out the drive.”

And animals are good, too, like bears
meandering across the yard toward the highway

where the trashcan waits to be mauled.
Or try something sexier, like a white ibis,

only seen here once every few years—
throw in a detail about its reddish legs

and its long reddish beak, how you saw it standing
beside the pond just as the day became light.

A small natural disaster works well in a gas station
where people often come in with news of the road.

“Yeah, nice day, except for that rock slide on Keystone.”
But don’t say it was an accident. Don’t say,

with a whimper into the phone, “Sweetheart,
sweetheart, can you come home now?

I fell. I can’t get up. I think I broke my leg.”
No “I think I am pregnant.” No “It’s over

between us.” No “You didn’t hear who died?”
But do something, and whatever you do,

do it early, before the fools get wise.