IN UNLIKELY PLACES... by Rosemerry WahtolaTrommer

It started out as a bummer…

My kids and I were driving the six-mile dirt road out of our canyon, trying to beat the rain. We could tell from the sky that the gulley washer was imminent, and we knew it was a matter of time before our access to the highway would be washed out.

Sure enough, the storm had hit first higher up, and we arrived at the low point in the road just in time to watch the wall of frothing water come through. Nothing to do then but wait.

There are times when we are touched with grace, when we can fully surrender to the world as it is instead of trying to force the world to be the way we want it to be. And in those moments, there's communion. I would never have guessed the blessing in store for me that day when the road washed out and there was nothing to do but show up right there in the middle of the mud.

(To hear Rosemerry recite her poem, just click on the play button below)

In Unlikely Places, and Likely Ones, Too

the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon transcended

the circle momentarily complete

            ~Lenore Kandel~

Step out onto the road

when the car can no longer

drive forward. The scent

of rain and mud hits the whole

of you like an olfactory prayer

in which you are the rain,

the gray mud, the washed out road

the road beyond the wash

the prayer and the one praying.

If you don’t think about

where you are going,

there is infinite pleasure

in the here of it all, the water

surging, the darkened sky,

the rising feeling that everything

is deeply connected, the urge

to whisper love into every cactus,

snakebrush, stone and ditch,

the urge to weep, the urge to laugh,

and the gurgle that happens inside us

when all of these urges collide.

How alive we are, my god,

how alive, how thin the veils

between us and heaven.

Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “is a chanteuse of the heart,” says poet Art Goodtimes. She served two terms as the first poet laureate for San Miguel County, Colorado, where she still leads monthly poetry readings, teaches in schools, leads writing workshops and leaves poems written on rocks around the town. Her most recent collection, The Less I Hold, comes out of her poem-a-day practice, which she has been doing for over seven years. Her work has also appeared on A Prairie Home Companion and in O Magazine, on tie-dyed scarves, alleyway fences and in her children’s lunchboxes. Visit her website here for ideas about writing, and to read her daily poems click here. 

~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~