22 Dec Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry for Xmas!
Google “last minute Xmas gifts” and 100s of ideas show up, among my favorites: a gift of your time, like offering to babysit for your friends’ progeny; tickets to a sporting event or concert; a charitable donation in a friend or loved one’s name; or one of many books, including books of poetry written, say, by our our favorite Word Woman, Rosemerry Trommer. Her work is available locally at Between the Covers Bookstore.
Quoting the dearly beloved showman Garrison Keillor: “A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go though it together.” That said and for those who have experienced loss – with apologies to “Carousel” – when you walk through this particular storm, holding your head up high is not easy. Neither is capturing loss and hope in words. Unless you are Rosemerry. For her, for all of us really, every Christmas is a palimpsest for the one that came before and the one before and so on back. Memories of Xmases past are as persistent as Santa myths.
Read on and be grateful if your memories shine as brightly as the ornaments on your tree. And/or be grateful for the grace with which Rosemerry shares her heart in the following two poems.
Walking with KC on Christmas Day
This, too, is Christmas, the quiet
walk on the quiet road in the quiet air.
The only carol here—
unending verses of river.
The only gifts we brought—
our attention, our trust.
This feast is for the heart.
There is a generosity to the sunshine
no candle could equal.
It’s a deep sweetness
to be wrapped in blue sky,
a deep sweetness
to share heartache, exhaustion—
something I would never wish for anyone,
and yet, this Christmas day,
the sharing of it,
such a beautiful present.
Rosemerry Trommer, aka Word Woman. Her poetry is a Xmas present to her large community of friends and admirers all year ’round.
Every Christmas Eve
for Diane
surrounded by bows
and ribbons, we sit on the floor
and wrap into the small hours—
all the while we unwrap our hearts
and give them again and again to each other
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