HOW TO EAT THE MOON

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

With salt, of course,

though there’s the matter of how

to get the salt to stick

without the assist of gravity.

And paired with a slightly chilled sauvignon blanc,

preferably from Marlborough, of course,

with its hints of green pepper and grass.

It doesn’t taste like cheese after all,

but then the experts never seem to be right.

It tastes more like, well, hard to say.

Try another bite.

You never thought you’d be here, did you,

sampling these bits of reflected light.

Almost as unexpected as the apology

earlier tonight from the man in the suit

so blue it looked black.

Maybe not a white. A red.

A cab. Dark fruit. Full body.

One that’s needed time to evolve.

Its complex woody tones will compliment

the moon’s impressive density.

What was it he said? “While

we obviously cannot change

the past, it is clear that we

must change the future.”

Toast to the future

and raise your glass

and take another nibble of moon.

Notice how dark it is, really,

about the color of asphalt, worn down.

It’s only because space itself is so dark

that the moon seems light.

All along you thought it was white.

Where else have you been wrong?

Perhaps between sips

and forkfuls you’ll find an apology

ripening there on your own startled tongue.

Perhaps you’ll dare to speak it.

The night makes its usual rounds.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poetry has appeared in O Magazine, in back alleys, on A Prairie Home Companion and on river rocks. She was recently appointed Poet Laureate of Colorado’s Western Slope used the position to launch “Heard of Poets,” an interactive poetry map of Western Colorado poets. She directed the Telluride Writers Guild for 10 years and now co-directs the Talking Gourds Poetry Club. Since 2005, she’s written a poem a day. Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.

CROSSING THE DIVIDE

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trimmer

Video published Nov. 18, 2015: Mohamed Abdeslam, brother of suspected Paris attackers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam lit candles and placed them on the window sill of his home during a vigil in Molenbeek, Belgium on Thursday, in solidarity with the people of France.

In the snowy wallow beside the road,
the elk do not move. Twenty or more.
The blue light of morning makes them blue.

It would be easy to drive past them
without noticing. How much do I miss
as I move through the world?

On the news, they speak of a candlelight vigil
near Brussels. In my mind, I turn the steering
wheel and begin the drive east to join the crowd.

Never mind the oceans, the wilderness
that separates us. Never mind that we
have never met. I get my candle ready.

The car, however, knows the way to work.
It moves steadily toward the north
past meadows where I notice nothing.

In the oncoming lane, almost all the cars
have their lights on, though by now
it is bright enough to see without them.

We who travel mountain roads have learned
the value of shining whatever light we have
so as not to make more dead.

Oh this light. It’s never enough.
Still this invitation to shine it
as brightly, as often as we can.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poetry has appeared in O Magazine, in back alleys, on A Prairie Home Companion and on river rocks. She was recently appointed Poet Laureate of Colorado’s Western Slope used the position to launch “Heard of Poets,” an interactive poetry map of Western Colorado poets. She directed the Telluride Writers Guild for 10 years and now co-directs the Talking Gourds Poetry Club. Since 2005, she’s written a poem a day. Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.

LAST LUNCH MENU

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

An original menu from the last first-class lunch served aboard the ill-fated Titanic has sold for $88,000 to a private collector at an online auction. —CNN, October 2, 2015

For the last lunch on the Titanic,
the kitchen served corned beef and dumplings.
We know because one of the men
who was saved in a lifeboat
kept his menu with him,
and over a hundred years later
someone bought the old scrap of paper
for eighty-eight thousand bucks.

My friends, just in case I die tonight,
and just in case it’s a dramatic,
exciting death, I want you to know
that for lunch I had Lay’s potato chips
and a Caribbean Spice smoothie
with protein powder. I didn’t
save the menu, I know, what a bummer.
But it’s written in chalk on the wall
at Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli, and if you take
a picture, well, somewhere down the centuries
it might just make a fortune for your kids.

Unlike that lucky survivor, I don’t happen to have
a Turkish bath ticket I can send you.
Too bad. I would have loved one today.
But perhaps at auction
you can make a few extra bucks
if you throw in the knowledge
that the sunflowers were in full bloom,
and the cottonwood trees were golden,
though it was already October 3.

The whole sale would be more profitable
if only I were more famous. Sorry.
Oh yes. Two pickles. I nearly forgot to mention.
They throw them in free with the kids’ sandwiches,
but those pickles might be worth a lot to you.
I hope not many others will die in this disaster,
but know that I am aware as I write this
that there is a sweet danger brewing,
and there are no life boats.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado. Her poems have appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion, in back alleys and on river rocks. One-word mantra: Adjust. 

AND SO IT GOES

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer 

Dating back 40,000 years to the Denisovan species of early humans, new pictures show beauty and craftsmanship of prehistoric jewellery. It is intricately made with polished green stone and is thought to have adorned a very important woman or child on only special occasions. Yet this is no modern-day fashion accessory and is instead believed to be the oldest stone bracelet in the world, dating to as long ago as 40,000 years. Unearthed in the Altai region of Siberia in 2008, after detailed analysis Russian experts now accept its remarkable age as correct.  New pictures show this ancient piece of jewellery in its full glory with scientists concluding it was made by our prehistoric human ancestors, the Denisovans, and shows them to have been far more advanced than ever realised. 'The bracelet is stunning - in bright sunlight it reflects the sun rays, at night by the fire it casts a deep shade of green,' said Anatoly Derevyanko, Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, part of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. —Anna Liesowska, The Siberian Times, May 7, 2015. Photo: Vera Salnitskaya

Thirty thousand years before the Stone Age,
someone made a bracelet of chlorite.
In the sun, the same sun that we know,
the bracelet glittered and reflected the rays.
In the night, just as dark and steep
as our night, the bracelet cast a deep shade
of green. Green, even then, was the color
of growth and new life. And the bracelet,
say the scientists, would have been worn
as protection from evil spirits. Not much has changed,
really, though the Denisovan people are long,
long gone from the caves in Siberia, gone
from the planet forever. But I think of how they,
like the homo sapiens, were moved
to make beauty. How they, too, perhaps stood
outside on a clear spring night
and felt the wind, the bright slap of the stars,
the possibility that art might save us.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado. Her poems have appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion, in back alleys and on river rocks. One-word mantra: Adjust. 

BETWEEN THE HEADLINES

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Image source: Q99FM

Snow and deeper snow,
all day it snows. Over sixteen
inches. On the news, I hear about a mystery man

dining across America leaving $5,000 tips
for $500 meals. It is, he reportedly says,
the work of the Lord, one tip at a time.

So much snow I cannot walk
across the street. The median
is a wall of white.

Of course I could walk
across the street. But
it would be wet. And deep. And cold.

Suzan tells me about the other news,
how all around the country young men
have taken to approaching strangers

and punching them to make them drop.
They don’t steal or mock. The point
is to make the stranger fall and run away.

Five inches of new snow falls on my car
while I speak to my teacher this morning.
She tells me, “Say yes to every experience.”

I wonder what I would do if someone
punched me. Or my husband. Or my dad.
I wonder what Jesus or Rumi would do.

There is no way to know what we might do.
It is all just perhaps until it actually happens,
like a weather report that calls for 16 inches of snow.

Today it is easy to say yes to the weather.
Yes as I scrape it from the windshield.
Yes as I trundle across the street through

the paths made by other trundlers. Yes
as I slip and bring myself down. Yes
as the snow itself makes the fall so soft. And cold.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado with her husband and two children. She is a parent educator for Parents as Teachers. Favorite four-word mantra: I am still learning. Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.

PICKING UP A HITCHHIKER IN MAY

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

"The burial of the dead is Humanity 101."
—Thomas Lynch, undertaker and poet, NPR, May 6, 2013

It’s messy when they die
in winter, he says. The dirt
is too cold to work with then.
I tell him I will consider this
when I die. Just give me two-weeks’
notice, he says, quoting a joke,
and it occurs to me humor
must be an unwritten
prerequisite for a grave digger.
I ask him what he thinks
about the recent uproar in Boston,
no one wanting the bomber
buried in their own backyard.
Well, he says, I’ve always thought
we should have a special section
for the politicians. We could put
him here with them—in a place where
we let the dogs run.
In the space before I laugh,
I remember the story
the undertaker told about how
in the middle ages they considered
suicide the ultimate crime.
But since you can’t punish a dead man,
they took out their ire on his corpse
and buried it at a crossroads
to be trod on forever. He said,
“If we do not take care of dead humans,
we become less human ourselves.”
The man next to me says,
“You know, I give every person I bury
the gravedigger’s promise.”
We are almost to the cemetery gate.
“I say, I’m the last person who’s ever gonna
let you down, and the last one
who’ll ever throw dirt on you.”
He laughs a laugh so real
I can smell the earth thawing in it.


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. She is a parent educator for Parents as Teachers. Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.