Though we have created our world so that we might
have light all the time, the darkness still finds its way into our psyche, into
our soul. What a gift it is to wrestle with ourselves, though it doesn’t always
feel like a gift.
There are two poems that radically shifted my own
perception of darkness: Rumi’s “Night Goes Back” and Rilke’s “You Darkness.” In
both of the poems, the poets declare to the night and the dark, “I love you.” I
remember at first being shocked by this, but perhaps that shock is part of what
helped to cut a door into darkness that I, too, could eventually walk through.
Into the Dark Again
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Dark and
getting darker—
nothing
to do but to make of the body
a home
for darkness,
to open
every secret drawer
where we
hide our private darknesses.
Who knows
what might happen then?
How
immeasurable we are. It is only
terrifying
until it becomes freedom.
Grace
comes in the strangest costumes.
Did you
really think you didn’t need help?
This
night, stay awake.
Some things
we can see no other way.
Western Slope Poet Laureate Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's poetry has appeared in O Magazine, in back alleys, on A Prairie Home Companion and in her children’s lunch boxes. Her most recent collection is “The Less I Hold.” She’s taught poetry for Think 360, Craig Hospital, Hospice, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Weehawken Arts, Camp Coca Cola, and many other organizations. She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate and directed the Telluride Writers Guild for 10 years. She has won the Fischer Prize, has twice won the Writer’s Studio Literary Contest, won the Dwell Press Solstice Prize, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. She curates “Heard of Poets,” an interactive poetry map of Western Colorado poets. Since 1999, she’s performed with Telluride’s seven-woman acappella group, Heartbeat, and since 2006, she’s written a poem a day. Her MA is in English Language and Linguistics. 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!~
Oy! It's been nearly three years; my apologies for the delay. (Time is interesting stuff.)
ReplyDeleteI have a personal and deep connection with this poem. It's a poem I've memorized, and continually recite to myself, ensuring it never leaves me. A co-worker who was going through yet another rough patch received a copy of this poem, anonymously, (I'm not saying who might have sent it to him.), letting him know he's far from alone.
So I'm so delighted seeing it's made its way into yet another circle, for, "Some things we can see no other way."