Poets’ Corner: Telluride’s Audrey Hepburn, A Poem for Ah Haa’s Auction

16 Jul Poets’ Corner: Telluride’s Audrey Hepburn, A Poem for Ah Haa’s Auction

Since childhood, Word Woman Rosemerry Trommer loved reading and writing poetry. She has inundated her shelves and brain with words by Gerard Manley Hopkins, e.e. cummings, Pablo Neruda, Rumi, Hafiz, May Swenson, Mary Oliver, Li-Young Lee, Jim Tipton and A.E. Stallings. Her poetry collections include “The Intimate Landscape” (Durango Herald Small Press, 2009); “Holding Three Things at Once” (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2008); “Insatiable” (Sisu Press, 2004); “If You Listen” (Western Reflections, 2001, winner of the Colorado Independent Press Association Poetry Award); and “Suitcase of Yeses,” an audio CD. Rosemerry is anthologized in “What Wilderness This Is: Women Write of the Southwest,” and “Geography of Hope: Poets of Colorado’s Western Slope.” Her MA in English Language and Linguistics is from UW-Madison.

Rosemerry Trommer also sings with Telluride’s female a cappella group, Heartbeat.

Ah Haa’s Audrey, aka Rosemerry

And, as one of two emcees for Ah Haa’s upcoming auction, (this Friday, July 18, 6 – 10 p.m.) the beautiful Rosemerry is Telluride’s answer to Audrey Hepburn.

Audrey Hepburn

 
It is not fancy, the campground, 
with the bathroom down the road. 
Gravel covers the tent site, 
and the number 13 hangs akimbo off
the fence that was once painted brown.
I’m embarrassed to bring Audrey here, 
but she sits at the red picnic table 
in her simple black dress and diamond tiara
and sips her tea, looking at me over the cup 
with her enormous doe eyes and she says
in a voice equal parts romantic and matter of fact: 
“Everyone wants to be loved, don’t we? 
Everyone looks for a way of finding love.
It’s a constant search for affection 
in every walk of life.” 
 
The box elder beetles are not as bad
this year as they were two years ago. 
Still, they seem to be everywhere
and one climbs across the table 
toward Audrey’s tea. She laughs
and brushes its red body away. I want to tell her
yes, yes I want to be loved. And
I have done terrible things in the name
of love, never wanting to hurt anyone. 
But I am too nervous to treat her 
like a friend. I have her on a pedestal, 
though I am beginning to sense
that it is getting in the way. She senses it, too. 
“I never think of myself as an icon,” 
she says. “What is in other people’s minds 
is not in my mind. I just do my thing.” 
 
A low rider goes by on the dirt road
beside us, and Eminem smacks the air 
with more talk about his mother. 
I don’t know why it makes both of us laugh, 
but we do, perhaps just because it is fun
to laugh. A mosquito lands in the middle
of her forehead, and I hesitate before
giving Audrey a slap, but I do. 
And knock over her tea. What is there
to do but offer to make her another cup. 
She says yes, and slaps me back.

“When you have nobody you can make
a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you,
that’s when I think life is over,” she says. 
God, she is beautiful, I think, looking 
straight into her eyes. That’s how I notice 
the pedestal is lower, now. Before
I could not see how clear they were, 
star-piercing, twin doors long since opened 
by love knocking from the inside.
 

Topo Car Tomboy Rd. from Ah Haa School on Vimeo.