Vox Populi
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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Every Poem
has a double-hung window inside it,
the kind that allows you to let in
a little more air when you feel as if you
can’t breathe. Sometimes, seeing through it
helps you find a new way to frame the world.
Sometimes it makes it easier
to feel as if there’s distance
between you and what the poem says,
as if you’re on the outside looking in
instead of the other way around.
Though when it’s dark, you can’t help
but see your own reflection.
When a poem makes you uncomfortable,
its window opens wide enough to let you
climb out, but not without things
getting a little awkward. I mean,
you are climbing out the window
instead of using the poem’s back door.
But mostly, the window lets the light change
so every time you re-enter the poem,
it feels different—familiar, but new;
and you wander around inside the lines
and wonder, did the poem change?
Or did you?
Copyright 2025 Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives with her husband and daughter in Placerville, Colorado, on the banks of the wild and undammed San Miguel River. She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate (2007-2011) and as Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017). Her many collections of poetry include The Unfolding.
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pure sweetness brought the bright airy house of this poem into being. I didn’t read it until now, getting distracted on our little vacation to visit our daughter’s family in the PNW (which includes these two insistent little girls who command your attention, great humour ever in the surrounding air, and maybe that’s the dynamic of Rosemerry’s poetry space, the you within and without, ever changing as ever, you stay the same.
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Lovely comment, Sean. Thank you.
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And yesterday I was in a hurry and read the poem quickly, while this morning, still in bed, I read again for the first time and the door opened differently and the light was new and oh wow.
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Yes….
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Poems as rooms! So much to this way of seeing. Thank you, Rosemerry, for the way you play with the world and words.
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…a double-hung window inside it,
the kind that allows you to let in
a little more air when you feel as if you
can’t breathe…
Love the image of a ‘double-hung window’ inside a poem for the air to come in, like Leonard Cohen’s ‘crack’ that lets the light in. Especially in these days of uncertainty and violence. You remind me to breathe Rosemerry!
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Lovely poem about the often invisible power of poetry❤️
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Yes, it is a lovely poem. Rosemerry is able to use simple language to express deep and profound insights…. What a gift!!!!
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Love it. And this is so true:
“But mostly, the window lets the light change
so every time you re-enter the poem,
it feels different—familiar, but new;”
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thank you, Rosemary! I am always so amazed by how poems change for me–which means that I have changed!
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Yes – even my own. Sometimes I wonder whether I actually did write it and where this came from…
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Brilliant. A fascinating way to look at the permeability of a poem, and how it blesses the reader and writer.
I’m curious about that mysterious back door to the poem. Does it lock the poet in, or keep the light out, unlike the double-hung window?
Thanks for this fascinating voyage.
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Right? What is the role of that back door …
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It’s so true, isn’t it, that once we have written a poem, we feel and are –– indeed — changed. And that, sometimes, “a window can be a mirror when it’s dark,(&) you can’t help // but see your own reflection.” What a most lit “Ars Poetica” this is! And how heart-warming it is that you remind us, Rosemerry, to look through those many windows, take in those thousand views, see ourselves in those many mirrors, & share the changing light, and how those poems change us and do — although it’s sometimes very difficult to see — “let in a little more air when you feel as if you //can’t breathe.” How poetry lights and lightens the worlds around us, right? Isn’t that why we keep writing? Why we must keep writing?
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Great, Ed! I’d love to meet with you on Friday May 23. Name a time and place in the Sq Hill area and I’ll be there.
M
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Absolutely! And also why I must keep reading … how the way I read poems keeps changing as I change. I think of how when I first read Rilke’s poem, “you darkness, I come from, I love you …” and it just didn’t do much for me. And then, years later, it became a lifeline …
It makes me happy to think of those French windows in your basement and how they let in the scent of lemon blossom …
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Always wonderful to begin a day with Rosemerry. ❤️
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Isn’t it, though?
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Absolutely!
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Thank you, dear Donna!!
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❤️❤️
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Ah, Rosemary, I’ve climbed out those windows, then changed my mind, clambered up the ivy and climbed back in to discover the traces I’d crannies and crevices, the ones that make the poem whole.
Thanks for your poem to begin my day.
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Ah, Luray, yes, you and I both … in and out, always something new to discover about the poem, about ourselves …
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