One
thing I love so much about poems is their ability to contain paradox…
Just
as we humans are always engaged in holding conflicting truths in ourselves: Odi et amo, I love and I hate. These are
not so much two feelings we grasp one after another, more feelings we hold at
the same time. No wonder the heart breaks!
When I wrote this poem, I was practicing how to
relax into unknowing. And then, life, as it does, showed up as my teacher: In
this case, a robin in the skylight.
After writing the last five lines, I realized how
much they were like one of my favorite rounds: “Be like a bird, who halting in
her flight on a limb so slight feels it give away beneath her, yet sings, sings
knowing she has wings.”
Finding the Way
With every
breath today
I let you go.
I don’t mean this
lightly. And
with every inhale
today, I let
you back in.
Softly. All
day like this. Flopping.
Flopping and
falling. Oh
the
ridiculous failure of it all.
And the
wonder. Shit.
If this is
awe, I am sick of it.
Just in the
last nine lines
I have let
you go another nine times.
And ten times
opened to you again.
I am too
tired to fix anything.
The dress
hem. The headphone
cord that one
of the children chewed.
Our hearts. I
have stopped believing in lack.
And then I
believe it again.
What I know:
Here we are.
I let you in.
I let you go.
Through the
window,
I watch a
robin light
on a branch
too thin,
watch it fly
away.
~
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. Favorite one-word mantra: adjust. 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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