For several years now, it has been my first-light ritual to combine a reading of Rilke with another poet as soon as I turn on the lamp. This is been a heady concoction that almost always prepares me for a unique day. I drink in the words and felt experience of a poet, captured now on a page of a book. It stirs a reflection of what the new day might mean. The reading sends me off with a first-light, fresh view of what it means for me to be alive in this new and wonderful day.
Besides Rilke, Ellen Bass has been a frequent contributor to my daily first-light experience in recent years. I have recently discovered Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, a poet who lives in Colorado, and now she often shows up when the light goes on. Within the pages of “Naked for Tea,” I am certain to find a new depth and freshness any morning I choose. Her skill as a poet invites a pleasant plunge into reflections cultivated in a life apparently lived in awareness.
There is an almost unsettling intimacy in sharing her observations. Similar to my reading of Ellen Bass, Rosemerry has a way of writing that is close to common human experience. Always penetrating, she writes in a way slightly less individual and personal than Ellen.
Rosemerry writes from a place of personal insight I think is available to us all. It certainly is available to me, and she coaxes it to emerge especially when I read her poetry at first-light.