Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry for Valentine’s Day

12 Feb Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry for Valentine’s Day

On Valentine’s Day, it all seems so straightforward, so simple: he gives you a little box or a big bouquet, chocolates too maybe; you give him, what?, basketball tickets. Long glance looks over a romantic dinner. But through her words, her pearls, regular contributor (thank heaven), Word Woman Rosemerry Trommer, understands love is not simple. It is a many nuanced thing. 

Below, five ways of looking at that fragile reality. 

And one for those who like just a little steam in their coffee…

(And please note, Rosemerry is one of two featured poets – the other is Art Goodtimes – at the February Talking Gourds gathering, in Telluride on February 21 at Telluride Arts’ HQ.)

Former Western Slope Poet Laureate, Wordwoman Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer leads new series about looking at ourselves through the eyes of our country’s Laureates.

Tonight While I Was Knitting

I imagined pearling

a silk shawl of prayers

generous enough to cover

the whole cold world,

the color of the moon.

So as Not to Overwhelm You

trying to fit it

into a tea cup,

this ocean of love

Sometimes After a Drought

the way the rain

soaks the earth—

not because the earth deserves it

but because it could not help but rain—

that’s how love arrives

After the Horse Nearly Rolls on My Daughter

I tell her, well, if you continue to work with horses,

before long you’ll be kicked and bucked and bit, too.

She smiles solemnly, slips back into her boots.

If only the heart could wear boots, I think,

something to make it feel a little more invincible.

No, I think. It doesn’t work that way. The heart,

though rolled and kicked and bucked and bit,

must never feel invincible. It must always know

it is in terrible danger of being hurt

and return to love anyway.

Even now,

as you hang

over the edge

of a cliff,

one hand dangling

empty

above the sheer

chasm,

the other

holding

a thin

brittle

branch,

isn’t it

oddly

wonderful

the only

thought

that hasn’t

fled in fear

is that

this, too,

would be

a great time

for kissing.