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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Doors Where I Have Knocked
Door of forgiveness that’s never locked.
Door of dreams. Door of god.
Door of contentment without a knob
that can only be entered with empty hands.
Door of tenderness that opens with breath.
Thick door of safety. Wide door of rest.
Windowless door to the future. Hingeless
door of hope. Door of patience. Door of no.
Door that requires I take off my name
before it will let me in. Door of prayer.
Trapdoor of sin. Door of courage.
Door of less. Door where the password
is always love. Trick door that appears
when I’m too weak to move. Door of
the heart where someone knocks back,
where I listen as if I might understand.
But it was the unwanted door of loss—the door
where I didn’t choose to knock, forged
from despair and gnarled wood—
that was the door that changed me for good.
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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I’ll be using this poem in a class! Thank you, Rosemerry.
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Mmmmm, thank you, Michael–oh that being changed for good. How I have resisted it and surrendered to it again and again and again. Thank you so much for sharing this poem ❤️❤️
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Rosemerry, VP readers love your wise melodic poems. Even when you face dark subjects, I leave your poems feeling empowered.
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Thank you Rosemerry for the love and courage you etched in each line of this necessary, poignant poem. I will send it to many of my friends — and keep it close by, too, for myself.
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Thank you, Laure-Anne, thank you … oh all the ways we open and are opened …
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So much to praise about it: the way the poem reaches completion with the single end rhyme, after the metaphorical doorways open to our imagination. The grief door of gnarled wood that changes us for good, stops the knocking for what’s beyond. There are things that hold us in their loving, besides doors.
There are many not-yet-written poetry anthologies waiting to let this poem in.
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Yes!
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Thank you, friend, for this thoughtful reading–it did certainly begin as a leap into imagination … and ended so in the body, even in the very germanic and resonant -ood sound ❤️❤️
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Oh beautiful and terrible doors. I love doors, so I love this and its chant and repetition, but I find its ending quite ambiguous and fitting for what the doors open. Thank you, Rosemary and Michael.
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Thank you, Mary ❤️
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Oh, what a beautiful poem, Rosemerry. I’m saving it to share with my poetry class this fall.
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Thank you, dear Lisa! A list poem! Some of my favorite poems are lists!
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I love this poem for its incantatory rhythm of loss which leads us inevitably to the healing salvation at the end.
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