On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including the insects. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.

There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.

Watch and listen to Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer read this poem as a “cinepoem”:

First published in Braided Way. Posted by kind permission of the poet.

Photo by Christopher Campbell


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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator who co-hosts the Emerging Form 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 most recent poetry collections are All the Honey (Samara Press, 2023) and The Unfolding (Wildhouse Publishing, October 2024). In January, 2024, she became the first poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief, bereavement, wonder and love through poetry. One-word mantra: Adjust.

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Grief
Poetry