Why I Urge You to Do What You’re Passionate About - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

[Larry Robinson]

Why I Urge You to Do What You’re Passionate About


When Rilke travelled through Russia
and studied Saint Francis 
and fell in love with the married Salomé
and wrote poems for The Book of Hours, 
he could not have known
that over a century later 
a woman on another continent
would find herself wrestled by darkness
and find in his poems encouragement
to lean even deeper into darkness 
until she could fall in love 
with what she feared most. 
He could not have known she would
tattoo his words into her memory
and scribe them into her blood
so whenever she walked or lay in the dark 
she would have his words ever with her,
and they made her not only more brave
but more wildly alive than she’d been before.
And what if, as his parents had pushed, 
Rilke had joined the military 
and turned his back on poetry? 
And what if he had not gotten himself expelled 
from trade school so he could go on 
to study literature and art?
What would have become of the woman
a hundred years later 
had she not found his poem
and learned from him to love the dark? 

	- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer