Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Like a Friend

In Broad Daylight

I take my rage to the river.
A heron flies into the wind.
I let myself be opened
by the great gray wings
and the great gray sky
and the great gray largeness of water,
not to rid myself of rage,
but to become a clearer channel
so I can meet the chest-scouring,
scab-clawing, cell-screaming,
throat-burning fury of rage
and remind my heart I can
know all this rage, can be
feral with rage, and still
keep on loving the world.

~~


After I Fell in the Canyon of Grief

we discover that falling in the canyon is our initiation
—Mark Nepo


I didn’t land. I fell and I fell and I fell.
At first as I plummeted, I feared the landing,
imagining an imminent crash. Then,
I fell through nights and middays. Fell through
kitchen floors and highways. Fell through
birthdays and Saturdays. Fell until the sense
of groundlessness was so familiar it no longer
felt like peril. I don’t know when I stopped falling.
There was no splat. No splash. No crushing of bones.
No sense of arrival. In fact, I am not certain
I am done with my falling. But I do trust now
the falling is not something to be feared.
Not that we grow wings. This is not about flying.
It’s about falling. About meeting the gravity
and feeling its force and letting it carry me
in ways I have never before let myself be carried.
Now I trust that the canyon of grief is
just another name for living the fullest life.
The reward for the falling is to no longer
expect a reward. The reward of falling is to
learn to not resist the falling. The reward of falling
is to feel how grace falls with us as if holding
our hand, like a teacher, like a friend.

~~~~~

Copyright 2026 Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is 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, Washington Post’s Book Club, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her newest book is The Unfolding. Newest album: Risking Love. One-word mantra: Adjust.