POETS’ CORNER: ROSEMERRY RESPONSE TO THE MASSACRE

18 Dec POETS’ CORNER: ROSEMERRY RESPONSE TO THE MASSACRE

Editor’s note: Almost all of us have been following the aftermath of the massacre in a Connecticut school. Newtown is our town. Their kids, our kids. The following is a response from our favorite Wordwoman, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, whose poetry, including her latest book, #13, “The Less I Hold,” can be found at Between the Covers Bookstore, Telluride.

Candlelight vigil, Newtown, Conn., CNN

Meeting the World Completely

Perhaps because the wound
is so deep, or perhaps because

there is not one petal left
to murmur over, or perhaps

because it really is a miracle,
today the heart breaks open

even wider and unthinking we exclaim
yes, yes to the wind as it stirs

the whole field into shimmer,
whirling all the loosened snow up, up

into the air until the invisible currents
are visible, white-frocked and shining,

swift swirl and rising, stiff scour then
drop. The uplift, ferocious,

and then the hushed sifting of light
through the dark evergreens,

the frisky cold kiss crystalline
on our cheeks—the wild gasp of oh in our breath

is spontaneous and real, every bit as real
as the world we would rather not know,

that terrible world, how it follows us
everywhere we go, how even now

its shadow makes this light
even more impossibly light.