Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry in Age of Corona

07 Jun Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry in Age of Corona

In the Age of Corona nothing is guaranteed except change: for better (we hope)  – or for worse (please no). Telluride’s Word Woman Rosemerry Trommer, who comments on the pandemic and its progeny regularly, is always on the side of the light, as one of her most recent poems on the demonstrations suggests.

Word Woman Rosemerry Trommer, courtesy reallife photographs.

Until We’re All Away from the Edge

   for Jennifer Unterberg

In the picture on the news,
the little black girl holds a sign
that says, I’m your next president.
And in the grocery store,
the clerk smiles at me from behind her mask
and compliments my dress.
Consumed as I’ve been
with a sorrow so great
it swallowed our country whole,
I had thought it would take an energy
equally great and opposite
to pull me away from the bleak edge.
But then a stranger walked up to my car
where I was parked on the side of the road
to make sure I was okay. And just like that
I felt myself backing away from the edge,
just a bit, just a bit.

It can be so small, what reminds us
who we are—a people who want
to thrive, to live in peace,
a people who are kind to each other
not because we have earned it, but
because kindness is in our nature.
I want to vote for that little girl,
want to help create the just world she rises in.
I want to help someone else
back away from the edge,
just a bit, just a bit, another bit.