Still Life At Dusk by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Still Life At Dusk
Rosemerry Wahtola TrommerIt happens surprisingly fast,
the way your shadow leaves you.
All day you’ve been linked by
the light, but now that darkness
gathers the world in a great black tide,
your shadow leaves you to join
the sea of all other shadows.
If you stand here long enough,
you, too, will forget your lines
and merge with the tall grass and
old trees, with the crows and the
flooding river—all these pieces
of the world that daylight has broken
into objects of singular loneliness.
It happens surprisingly fast, the loss
of your shadow, and standing
in the field, you become the field,
and standing in the night, you
are gathered by night. Invisible
birds sing to the memory of light
but then even those separate songs fade
into the one big silence that always
seems to be waiting.
MARGINALIA
I should be stronger than this.
ABOUT ROSEMERRY WAHTOLA TROMMER
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator who co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her recent collections are All the Honey and The Unfolding. In 2024, she became poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief and love through poetry.… (more)
Read more poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Facebook • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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Hannah RosesareRed
I love this.