{"id":11513,"date":"2026-05-21T18:12:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T00:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/koto.org\/?post_type=news&p=11513"},"modified":"2026-05-21T18:12:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T00:12:41","slug":"san-miguel-canyon-telluride-poetry-box-colorado","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/koto.org\/es\/news\/san-miguel-canyon-telluride-poetry-box-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"A Placerville Poetry Box"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driving into San Miguel Canyon, about one mile from the intersection with Highway 62, travelers may spot a box at a roadside pullout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had it in my head, \u2018Wouldn\u2019t it be great to have a place on the highway where people could take poems,\u2019\u201d said local poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople pull over here all the time to talk on the phone or rummage around in their backseat for something,\u201d Trommer said. \u201cI thought, \u2018Well, maybe they would stop and get a poem.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Trommer had her husband build a box \u2014 more like a notice board seen at a trailhead \u2014 for poems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A poetry box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The box stands more than 6 feet tall and is painted bright yellow with purple, blue, orange and green flowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has a glass door that opens into a cork board where I post poems, and other people can also post poems there,\u201d Trommer said. \u201cTo that end, there is a pullout drawer that has pens and pencils and cardstock papers, and you could write your own poem on a foldout desk. It\u2019s a perfect height. Standing right here by the highway, you could write a poem and post it right inside that gorgeous little cabinet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it stands alone on the side of the road, Trommer sees it as a community gathering place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is such a sweet way for us to communicate with each other, especially because we are so far-flung,\u201d Trommer said. \u201cI have to tell you how much I love that it isn\u2019t digital. I\u2019m looking at one that was clearly written by Art Goodtimes. Who would not recognize Art Goodtimes\u2019 handwriting once you had seen it? That is something you don\u2019t get on the computer, something so personal. Even the ripped edge of the paper \u2014 just to see people\u2019s handwriting and have it up in an old-fashioned way. The humanity of it is so exciting to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the hubbub of technology and artificial intelligence, Trommer believes poetry helps people explore what it means to be human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat it is to regret. What it is to wonder. What it is to feel two things at the very same time and feel tugged in opposite directions and know that\u2019s what it is,\u201d Trommer said. \u201cThat we are the all of it. I love the way poems bring this out. It just allows us to show up as our raw, imperfect selves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A smattering of poems fills the box, with different handwriting scrawled across the pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The featured poem on this day is \u201cInstructions on Not Giving Up\u201d by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Lim\u00f3n.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor\u2019s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it\u2019s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world\u2019s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I\u2019ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I\u2019ll take it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n