Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer co-hosts the Emerging Form podcast on creative process. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour and O Magazine. Her most recent poetry collections are All the Honey and The Unfolding. Learn more.
What past event do you often reflect upon, and how did that event change you?
When I was three or four, my mom sat in the big easy chair in our living room and invited my younger brother and me to come sit in her lap. She told us our grandfather had died. It was my first time meeting the death of a loved one. I was surprised by tightness in my chest, the prickle in my eyes. I told her, “I think I’m going to cry.” She told me that was okay. In my first experience of mortality, I learned tenderness, generosity and intimacy, and I learned my feelings were not a problem.
How does your work add to the quality of your life?
Writing daily poems is really a practice of being willing to show up, to be curious, to wonder, to say yes to life as it is. I can’t imagine a more important practice. In the most difficult moments of my life, I’ve been able to stay open — to want to stay open — even when it’s terribly painful.
And reading poems is an invitation to see the world differently — to find new frameworks and consider other voices. It’s an unending invitation to connect, to know the self as a part of the whole.
Tell us a story you would like to share with the world.
On the night my son died, I was walking alone in the Georgia heat. My friend Wendy called and wisely said, “He has given you his love light to carry.” In that moment, a firefly lit up in front of my face, a tiny exclamation point. I am so grateful for the way her words inspired me then and now to live into a legacy of love. I’d love to offer them to every other person who has lost a beloved. “They have given you their love light to carry.” What a gift to be in service to that light.
Author photo: Joanie Schwarz
Side bar image: Pixabay/Edar
