Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has done quite a number on me this month, my 57th Birthday Month. I chose Rosemerry as my Poet Guide for the month of September. As the last week of my Birthday Month draws nearer, she has been nudging me to come out from behind my notebook and share the poems that lay hidden between my pages.
Rosemerry does not just write poems, she writes them every day, and shares them every day. Every day, a new poem goes out into the world, an offering to some soul who is waiting for the balm Rosemerry’s words are.
I started writing a poem a day at the beginning of 2022, from the smallest of moments. They provided a documentation of who I was that day – what I paid attention to, and each poem gifted me a discovery in the making. It became an obsession. However, most of them are not very good. In fact, many of them make me shudder at the childlike sweeping words of my pen. But, maybe this is the point. To share these poetry beginnings with the world to overcome our fear of perfection. We are working those bravery muscles and quieting that critic every time we hit SUBMIT.
Rosemerry’s words echo with each poem scribed:
“They do not have to be good. They just have to be true.”
William Stafford, my poet guide from April, and his son, Kim Stafford, my guide from May, each also wrote/write a poem a day and have adopted this same way of writing and sharing poems. Both poets also urge us to write bad poems, but make them be true.
So, at the Poet Guides’ urging, I begin. Along with many other poets who fling their words out into the world, in hopes they just might land on some thirsty soul. But that really does not matter to me. The words are there to remind myself – to live my life wide awake to each miniscule moment of my day. I do not know when the last day will arrive, but I whisper to myself each morning, “What if this were the last day?” and I choose to live it as such.
POETRY INVITATIONS
Some poems arrive on their own spoken words from someone you love a passer-by, or a stranger their words - a doorway to inside. Or perhaps the conversation between two crows soaring in the sky beg for documentation, the oaks, the acorns, and the rocks we carry in our suitcases, all yeast for the bread of a poem. But, somedays, a nudge from a poetry friend is is the remedy- Rosemerry or Padraig, Naomi or Natalie, They whisper, Shari - see this poem? Feel it? Here's what they did! You try it! Trade out words of your own! Well, Padraig adds, you don't have to if you don't want to, you can do what you want. Rosemerry looks at Padraig and then me and adds: But, it's FUN! Writing and sharing a poem a day ~ "The writing is inhaling and the sharing is exhaling. They don't have to be good, they just have to be true." ~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Islands of My Soul 