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POSSIBILITY by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer


 This poem essentially fell into my napkin as we were eating dinner one night…

Sometimes our children can be such fine teachers, helping lead us to an appreciation for how ephemeral, how precious our life is. I was aware, as the conversation was happening, both of what was happening in our room and outside of our room, 

...and the poem was a way to circle around what was happening inside of me—some simultaneous experience of discovery and loss.

I think all of us look back on past conversations and think of what else we might have said. I still don’t know how I might have handled it differently. 

I have been wondering a lot lately about the ways we try to protect each other from difficult subjects. But as my teacher says to me:

"Everything you love can be taken from you, and eventually will be."

 The more I can accept this truth, instead of railing against it, the more peaceful I am. But how do we frame these truths with our children?

Possibility

—time is a tree(this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough
–e.e. cummings

At dinner, the boy says
in a matter of fact kind of way
Did you know that one day

the sun will burn out?
Yes, says the dad, and
the little girl, starts to cry.

That means there will
be no more mornings,
she says. Oh sweetheart,

that’s true, says the mom.
But it will not happen
for a long, long time,

long after you are gone.
This is no comfort
to the weeping one,

who, between bites
of cucumber and rice,
is tasting the loss of light,

the end of warmth,
this life only so long.
Outside, three leaves

fall, golden and full
of sun, but she does not
notice them. 

(Poem originally published in 'The Less I Hold' available here) 


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!~ 

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