Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry for Valentine’s Day!

14 Feb Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry for Valentine’s Day!

Fact 1: The city of Verona, where Shakespeare set his love story about Romeo and Juliet, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine’s Day.

Fact 2: Cynics insist Valentine’s Day is all about men atoning for their sins of omission by buying sweethearts toasters and scant, silky undergarments. And women? We make desperate attempts to put the magic back into our relationships by swooning over professional basketball. The rest of the world, however, seems to swallow the softer, gentler notion of the holiday – like chocolate. In our view, however, nothing sets the tone better than the following poems written by one of our favorite regional poets: Wordwoman, Rosemerry Trommer. Both are antidotes to the daily headlines and remind to practice love, not hate or war.

“One is a love poem about love in general; the other about a long-term love. Not flashy, flirty young love but tender, anchored old love,” explains Rosemerry.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, credit; Joanie Schwarz.

On a Day When the World Has Its Way With Me

Like every day, this day
it is clear that only love
will save us. Not in the grandiose

abstract way, but in the alarmingly
specific way. As in forgiveness, now.
As in choosing to hold our own hand instead

of swinging back. As in taking
three deep breaths before saying
something we regret. Love saves us

from thirsting in the desert of our lives,
but only if we save it first by
choosing it, now in this moment

of angry words, now in this moment
of clenched thoughts, now in
this moment when we’d rather

taste venom, but instead, we
pour love into our cup and
bring it to our lips and drink

and drink until once again
only love makes sense,
only love refills the cup.

The Long Marriage

Perhaps I know you best in the dark—
that nightly shrine
where my belly meets your spine,
where the bend of my knees
meets the bend of your knees,
where my warmth meets your warmth,
the night a vase
in which we place
the stems of our bodies,
in which I know myself
through touch.
And nothing must be said
and nothing must be done
except to meet the long familiar flesh,
this honoring of nakedness.

Perhaps I know you best in the dark—
these lightless hours when
we sit in the midst of brokenness
and my hand finds your hand,
and my silence finds your silence,
my loss finds your loss,
and together, somehow,
we find peace.
And nothing can be said.
And nothing can be done
to change the past.
We meet in the these darkened hours,
with nothing but our willingness
to meet these darkened hours,
these hours we would have pushed away,
these hours that bring us closer to each other.