August 11, 2026 by Rosemerry
Quiet as a rabbit
nibbling on grass,
obvious as a flicker
knocking on a tree,
surprising as a white feather
landing on my tights,
again and again,
you appear, or more truly,
again and again,
I see what has
always been here—
you in everything,
your absence
throbbing with life.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged absence, connection, death | 3 Comments »
August 10, 2026 by Rosemerry
It’s almost here! On September 8, my newest book will be released! You can join me for a pre-release party hosted on zoom by Kayleen Asbo on Saturday, August 29, 6-7:30 p.m. mountain time. Donations accepted. Recorded.
You can pre-order the book from my local bookstore, Between the Covers, and I will personalize it for you (there’s a comments section at the final checkout for you to say who you want the book signed to). Order before September 12 when I go in to sign the books. The bookstore will ship your book to anywhere in the US the next day.
And European friends, you can also join me for a special European zoom launch with The Poetry Pharmacy on September 24 at 6 p.m. in the UK (11 a.m. mountain time) Tickets available with or without a book purchase.
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August 10, 2026 by Rosemerry
When we met,
we had no idea
how we all, like
this land, carry
inside us
the memory
of volcano
and glacier.
How easily we
can be fooled
by the present
landscape,
calm and serene.
Just because
there are spruce
here now and
gentle streams
doesn’t mean
there wasn’t once
a violent explosion
of fire and ash,
a long and cold
scraping of ice.
Here in the aftermath
of upheaval,
in this ongoing story
of transformation,
I see how our hearts
have been carved wide
as this high alpine
basin, and even
in the places where
nothing yet grows,
my god, it’s
so beautiful.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged community, connection, landscape, mountains, surface, transformation | 4 Comments »
August 9, 2026 by Rosemerry
By night, the mountain gentian
closes the dark purple vase of its petals,
tightening around its most vulnerable parts,
protecting its nectar from cold night air,
from heavy dew. Everything is at stake.
Oh woman who longs to stay open,
to ever unfold, to widen your arms
in an ever expansive reach,
what do you have to learn
from the wisdom of wildflower,
from the natural systole and diastole
of open and close, open and close?
How might your own growth
depend on learning to wrap
those well-intentioned arms
around your own center
and tuck in to that primary,
essential embrace?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged gentian, metaphor, night, opening, self-care, wildflower | 4 Comments »
August 9, 2026 by Rosemerry
We are in it together,
this certainty we are alone.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aloneness, togetherness | 1 Comment »
August 9, 2026 by Rosemerry
Today
more fen
than stream,
I draw
my source
from depths
unseen.
No need
to move,
how still,
how clear
am
I.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged clarity, fen, river, stillness | 2 Comments »
August 9, 2026 by Rosemerry
for Lacy, Ellen, Jessi Lu and Lisa
In the darkness, Lacy points us toward two stars
stacked in a vertical line just above the horizon.
She teaches us to see the parallelogram
of a celestial teapot, then guides us
to find the spout which empties out
into the very center of our galaxy.
Naked, we stare at the distant milky glow
and know in our bones the center is not,
in fact, light years away, but right here
in our wood-fired hot tub in the middle
of a meadow with mountains all around.
Or wherever women commune, says Jessi Lu.
Yes, this is the tea cup right here, a cup
overflowing with laughter, tears, stories,
heart, and an ancient swirl of glittering stars.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged constellations, galaxy, high camp, hot tub, women | 4 Comments »
August 5, 2026 by Rosemerry
Re-Seeing
This morning I saw my hand and marveled—
the smoothness of the finger pads
like sandstone eroded by centuries of wind,
the wrinkled cords between the pointer
and the thumb like cottonwood roots rising
out of the ground, the fine wrinkles in the knuckles
like thin braided strands of spider silk,
the splotchy spots of white below the plush heel,
like small puffs of morning clouds in the desert.
This hand that has held weeping children
and planted beets, scraped cat vomit from the carpet
and carried river stones to build a home. I stared
at this hand I have known my whole life and wept
for the sheer miracle of hand, how even the most
familiar, intimate parts of ourselves, the parts we take
most for granted, have the most to teach us about
gratefulness, about how to see and meet the world.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
*
Hey friends, I will be away for four days, teaching remotely in the glorious San Juans at High Camp Hut with no cell, no wifi, and lots of spaciousness. I’ll be back with poems on Sunday night. In the meantime, if you are jonesing for poems, you can find them on my blog (a backlog of poems from the last 12 years or so): A Hundred Falling Veils.
Or, you can subscribe to the Ritual app on your phone and there I read a poem every day (twice!) and offer ways to think about it and also optional writing invitations. You can find that on your phone here (there is a small fee to subscribe): The Poetic Path
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged hand, seeing | 11 Comments »
August 4, 2026 by Rosemerry
The cantaloupe was golden
beneath its raised veins,
the globe of it heavy in my hands,
its musky perfume filling the hot
summer air at the farmstand.
When I handed the woman my money,
I was paying her not so much for this melon,
but for the memory of other melons
we have shared when I moaned my delight,
the sweet orange flesh deliquescing
in our eager mouths.
This melon was no such melon.
Though we waited and waited,
when I sliced in and offered you a bite,
we both agreed the flesh was a bit too hard,
the flavor sweet but a little flat.
A fine-enough melon. But not a melon
for rhapsodizing or writing an ode.
I think of Grandma Betty, how
in her later years it didn’t matter
what you served her, she would always declare,
This is the best pie I ever had.
This is the best tea I’ve ever had.
This is the best. The best.
This is not the best cantaloupe I have ever had,
just a substandard stand in for ecstasy. Yet here I am
writing an ode to this mediocre melon, learning again
how my longing for something to be different from what it is
can destroy any joy found in what is here.
Somehow, this fine-enough melon is bringing me to my knees
at the altar of the moment, humbling me, inviting me to question
how I choose to meet the world.
It is, perhaps, after all, the best melon I have ever had.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cantaloupe, comparison, enough, fruit, grandmother, presence, showing up | 21 Comments »
Now that I know for certain she will leave me,
I dare to love her more. Her room will be empty.
The house no longer filled with her music.
The spilling trills of her laughter too far away to hear.
I have known since her birth she would leave me,
but knowing is different from feeling, and her absence
comes so soon. At the same time the heart lets her go,
lets her go, lets her go, it leans in closer, becomes a sanctuary
that knows no walls, a nest as wide as the world.
At the same time I release her, I fall more deeply in love
with the way she croons to her cat, with the feathery softness
of her skin, with how a song is ever winging from her lips.
I welcome it, this ache. These tears were always meant
to be cried. This heart was always meant to break.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged absence, college, daughter, graduation, heartbreak, letting go, mother | 11 Comments »