Poetry - Crooked Ravn

About the Author

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a Poet Laureate from Southwest Colorado. She has won appeared in many magazines, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and has been nominated for and won many awards for her work. She wrote a poem, What Comes Next, in which she talks about longing for love, compassion, and peace in the face the cruelty of war and oppression. This poem was written in solidarity with Palestine, but its themes expand to the cruelty of all oppression and/or war.

After hearing her poem recited by Chad Syder at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Mankato, I reached out to her via email for permission to post her work on my blog. She sent a heartfelt response back to me granting me permission. For those of us in Minnesota, she also said, “Here in Telluride we will be having a candlelight vigil in solidarity with Minnesota and name all the people who have been killed by ICE (the ones we know) and I will lead people in singing songs.”

What Comes Next, From A Hundred Falling Veils, used with permission of the author

There’s a place in my brain where hate won’t grow.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Jerusalem”
 
 
The man in Palestine runs
toward airdropped parcels,
is shot in the back of his head.
The military says such a shot
was never fired. The dead man
does not argue back. His body
is carried away with medicine,
dried beans, sacks of flour.
How many more must weep?
This world. This world with its
guns and fear and righteousness.
Whether or not we hold the gun,
we all have a finger on a trigger.
What else can we do with our hands?
I want to believe in a goodness
that persists despite cruelty—
not a fairytale story with a wand
or a genie, but a real story in which
a real woman grows peaches and gives
them away for the joy of giving.
A story in which a man helps another
man build a home with a bed, an oven,
a roof. War comes so quickly.
Peace comes so slow. I want to believe
there is in all of us a place
where hate won’t grow.
I want to feed that place in myself.
I want to listen to that place in you.
I want us to live into another possible world,
discover what else our lives can do.