Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry for Father’s Day!

19 Jun Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry for Father’s Day!

The American version of Father’s Day looks back over its shoulder to Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington. The woman allegedly wanted to honor her widower father, a Civil War veteran who raised six kids alone.

The first observance is generally dates back to 1910. But it took a remarkably long time to stick as an official holiday: Father’s Day wasn’t permanently established nationally until 1972, over half a century after Mother’s Day became official.

Part of the delay was commercial skepticism: there was real worry it was just a manufactured excuse to sell men neckties and pipes, plus many fathers reportedly found the whole sentimental fuss a bit over the top.

Today Father’s Day is  one of the bigger days of the year for phone calls – long a peak collect-call day before cell phones – and the rose is its traditional flower: red for a living father; white worn in memory of one who has passed.

Yes the third Sunday in June, fathers, fatherhood, paternal bonds in general are honored by their loved ones, generally with gifts and greeting cards.

But, as the following quartet of poems penned by Word Woman Rosemerry Trommer so beautifully illustrates, a good father does not just tell you he loves you. He shows you. 

Wearing a white rose, Rosemerry enchants with her bouquet of words, unique and very special gifts for fathers everywhere. 

Rosemerry in years past with her dad.

Inner Girl
July 6, 2025 by Rosemerry

I don’t know why he started calling me Roxanne,
but sometime in high school that’s what Dad did.
No matter it wasn’t my name. I loved how it made
me feel—something just ours. Dad had a way
of doing that—making a person feel seen, feel
uniquely known to him. And so today,
on his birthday, I imagined Dad could see me
through the veils of death. I talked to him as usual
as I weeded the garden bed. Told him about
the four river otter that showed up in the pond today,
how they slid their dark slick bodies across the top
of the water and dined on crawdads for hours.
As always, Dad didn’t talk back. Then, tonight,
at a party, when a woman introduced herself
as Roxanne, I stared at her, stunned, then unraveled
into tears. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it’s strange
to have a person start to weep when you tell
them your name.” She was kind to me all
the same. Just hearing someone say the word
I understood how much I miss hearing him
say it, miss the person I am with him.
It’s as if a door has been locked for years—
the door through which I am Roxanne.
Someone silly. Treasured. Supported. Known.
Hearing the name again felt like a key,
a gift on his birthday. It didn’t bring him back,
but it revived a forgotten part of me.
Even now, she is writing this poem.

How He Loved to Fish
November 5, 2025 by Rosemerry

Dad could barely walk,
but put a rod in his hand
and pass him a bag full
of tackle and bait
and that man could traverse
over mountains or swamps
to get to the place
where the bite was on.
I remember him reeking
of fish, his thick hands
covered in slime,
his smile wide as a river
is long. He was chatty,
then, giggling each time
he’d feel the sharp tug
on the line, whistling out
a long ooooooh-eeee as he
reeled and pulled.
How he thrilled in every
part of the act—
the planning, the waiting,
the catching, the gutting, the eating.
Years later, I can almost
scent it here on my hand—
the pungent, sour smell
brings me back to when Dad
was most alive,
not those hours in the ER,
not those years in the chair
swaying back and forth
to dance with his pain, no,
a straight path to those days when
his eyes were bright with ecstasy
and the current of his joy so strong
it still carries me, even now.

Going Fishing with Dad Four Years After His Death
November 19, 2025 by Rosemerry

Dear Dad,
Yesterday I met a man who went fishing.
It was sleety, bracing, gray.
He went fishing anyway. Actually,
as you would say, he went “catching.”
Just one fish, he said, but I felt his gladness,
the modest kind that does not
depend on good weather, the gladness
we feel when we follow the pull
of what we love. Like how I find pleasure
in writing, even when the conditions
are heartache and loss. Even then,
there’s pleasure in standing in the river
of the moment, my whole body attuned,
waiting for the tug. It made me feel close to you dad,
the way his face lit up, just as yours used to
when the talk turned to what was biting.
And now writing to you about my day,
it’s like I’ve cast a line to you. The rain
in here tastes like salt, but oh the gladness
when I feel it on your end, the tug.

The Talisman
December 2, 2025 by Rosemerry

It wasn’t the time he taught me to ride
without training wheels. Wasn’t fishing
on the lake for crappies or hunting
in the Wisconsin woods for squirrels.
Wasn’t the cassette tapes he made me
when I moved away from home or the rare tears
he cried when I left. It wasn’t the way
he forgave me when I forgot to call
on his fiftieth birthday. Wasn’t the white
sweater he bought me the year before he died
because he said I looked so beautiful in it.
Or maybe it was all those things—everything
he did, everything he was, every quiet touch and
unsung sacrifice ,so I never once doubted his love.
His love as solid as he was. His love stained me.
Can never be removed, no matter how fiercely
the world tries to scrub me of hope.
Every day I take in the violent raids,
the infinite ways we defile and dismiss
and destroy each other. And still I can’t unknow
his love, can’t untrust we are capable
of such goodness, such unflinching generosity.
His love, the talisman I wear in every cell.
It protects me not from the horror, but
from the error of believing the horror is all.
There is also how he hummed to me
when I was scared. How he cheered for me,
even when I failed. How in my most vulnerable
hours, he held me and whispered my name.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, more: