Past the blacktop, past the swings
a girl has wandered into tall grass,
dry and golden and high, and look
how she tucks in beneath the seed heads
and makes in the stems a nest,
lies on her back and looks up at the sky.
She can hear the screams and squeals
of other children as they play.
But here she is daughter of silence,
fallen angel of sunshine. There are wings
inside her breath. What does she know
that I have forgotten? What does she
love that I now squint to see?
Where does she still live in this woman,
this wanderling who was me?
—
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives on the banks of the San Miguel River in southwest Colorado. She’s a poet, teacher, speaker, writing facilitator, and poet laureate of Evermore. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, Washington Post’s Book Club, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her newest books are All the Honey and The Unfolding. One-word mantra: Adjust.
