by Ellen Bass
not a silver coin, a saucer of milk,
a creamy mound rising over the horizon of a tight bodice,
not an onion in the martini sky, not the surprised
mouth of heaven, or the whole round face of God,
this moon is the moon,
circling in its own private orbit of slight eccentricity,
so close I can make out the smooth shadow of the Sea of Rains
and trace the rough, bright peaks of the ranges.
After Our Daughter’s Wedding
While the remnants of cake
and half-empty champagne glasses
lay on the lawn like sunbathers lingering
in the slanting light, we left the house guests
and drove to Antonelli’s pond.
On a log by the bank I sat in my flowered dress and cried.
A lone fisherman drifted by, casting his ribbon of light.
“Do you feel like you’ve given her away?” you asked.
But no, it was that she made it
to here, that she didn’t
drown in a well or die
of pneumonia or take the pills.
She wasn’t crushed
under the mammoth wheels of a semi
on highway 17, wasn’t found
lying in the alley
that night after rehearsal
when I got the time wrong.
It’s animal. The egg
not eaten by a weasel. Turtles
crossing the beach, exposed
in the moonlight. And we
have so few to start with.
And that long gestation—
like carrying your soul out in front of you.
All those years of feeding
and watching. The vulnerable hollow
at the back of the neck. Never knowing
what could pick them off—a seagull
swooping down for a clam.
Our most basic imperative:
for them to survive.
And there’s never been a moment
we could count on it.
Tulip Blossoms
Tulip trees hang over the Kalihiwai River,
large lemon-yellow flowers dangling from both banks.
As my son and I glide in a rented kayak,
they fall to the celadon surface, floating
like blessings in a private ritual.
When I smooth one open, the flat crepe petals
fan out, revealing a center so red
it’s almost black—redder
than blood, or port,
or the deepest bing cherries—hidden
in the core of the blossom, the rippled base.
“It looks like an asshole,”
my son observes softly, almost
to himself. And I am glad,
remembering the first time
I saw his dusky asterisk,
its perfect creased rays—
glad he can see the flower
in the most humble, darkest star.
IV.
Insomnia
Mighty Strong Poems
for Billy Collins
“What mighty strong poems,” he said.
And I repeat it all day, staggering
under sheaves of rejections.
But my poems, oh yes, they are brawny.
Even now I can see them working out at the gym
in their tiny leopard leotards, their muscly words
glazed with sweat. They are bench pressing
heavy symbolism. Heaving stacks of similes,
wide-stanced and grimacing. Some try so hard,
though it’s a lost cause. Their wrinkled syntax,
no matter how many reps they do, will sag.
But doggedly, they jog in iambic pentameter,
Walkmans bouncing. Some glisten with clever
enjambments, end rhymes tight as green plums.
Others practice caesuras in old sweats.
But they’re all there, huffing and puffing,
trying their best. Even the babies, the tender
first-drafts, struggling just to turn over, whimpering
in frustration. None of them give up.
Not the short squat little haikus
or the alexandrines trailing their long, graceful
Isadora Duncan lines. While I fidget
by the mailbox, they sail off in paper airplanes,
brave as kindergartners boarding the school bus.
They’re undaunted in their innocent conviction,
their heartbreaking hope. They want to lift cars
off pinned children, rescue lost and frozen
wanderers—they’d bound out,
little whiskey barrels strapped to their necks.
They dream of shrugging off their satin
warm-up robes and wrestling with evil.
They’d hoist the sack of ordinary days
and bear it aloft like a crown. They believe
they’re needed. Even at night when I sleep
and it looks like they’re sleeping, they’re still
at it, lying silently on the white page,
doing isometrics in the dark.
Why People Murder
I found out why people murder
in the kitchen of our house in Boulder Creek
where we’d made soybean patties,
dozens of soybean patties
ground up in our Vitamix blender and stacked,
in Saran Wrap, in the freezer.
He was in the living room.
In navy blue sweat pants and sheepskin slippers
and his pipe—he was tamping tobacco
with his thumb and looking for matches.
I picked up the knife we’d used to chop onions—
onions and carrots and whatever else it was
we put in those hopeful dry little cakes.
The details of this particular fight
are lost. But trust me, they don’t matter.
Just imagine need, primitive, a baby screaming
for the tit; lust, the clawing
into another, wanting to part the other like water,
and be taken in.
And desperation, that’s the big one.
You’re shaky as a junkie, the pain
hums, an electric current.
You’re frozen to it, a dog who’s
gnawed on a cord and must be kicked off.
Save me. I’m frantic. I’m on my knees, prostrate.
I’m flat as wax across the linoleum floor.
The knife is clean. I washed it after the onions.
I lurch into the living room. My breath
comes out visible, like in cold weather.
When he sees me, he’s startled, doesn’t
know if he should be scared.
I’m emanating like a rod of uranium.
He says my name, tentative. I look down
at the knife, as if I were carrying it to the drawer
and took a wrong turn.
Phone Therapy
I was relief, once, for a doctor on vacation
and got a call from a man on a window sill.
This was New York, a dozen stories up.
He was going to kill himself, he said.
I said everything I could think of.
And when nothing worked, when the guy
was still determined to slide out that window
and smash his delicate skull
on the indifferent sidewalk, “Do you think,”
I asked, “you could just postpone it
until Monday, when Dr. Lewis gets back?”
The cord that connected us—strung
under the dirty streets, the pizza parlors, taxis,
women in sneakers carrying their high heels,
drunks lying in piss—that thick coiled wire
waited for the waves of sound.
In the silence I could feel the air slip
in and out of
his lungs and the moment
when the motion reversed, like a goldfish
making the turn at the glass end of its tank.
I matched my breath to his, slid
into the water and swam with him.
“Okay,” he agreed.
Bearing Witness
for Jacki B.
If you have lived it, then
it seems I must hear it.
—Holly Near
When the long-fingered leaves of the sycamore
flutter in the wind, spiky
seed balls swinging, and a child throws his aqua
lunch bag over the school yard railing, the last thing,
the very last thing you want to think about
is what happens to children when they’re crushed
like grain in the worn mortar of the cruel
We weep at tragedy, a baby sailing
through the windshield like a cabbage, a shoe.
The young remnants of war, arms sheared and eyeless,
they lie like eggs on the rescue center’s bare floor.
But we draw a line at the sadistic,
as if our yellow plastic tape would keep harm
confined. We don’t want to know
what generations of terror do to the young
who are fed like cloth
under the machine’s relentless needle.
In the paper, we’ll read about the ordinary neighbor
who chopped up boys; at the movies we pay
to shoot up that adrenaline rush—
and the spent aftermath, relief
like a long-awaited piss.
But face to face with the living prey,
we turn away, rev the motor, as though
we’ve seen a ghost—which, in a way, we have:
one who wanders the world,
tugging on sleeves, trying to find the road home.
And if we stop, all our fears
will come to pass. The knowledge of evil
will coat us like grease
from a long shift at the griddle. Our sweat
will smell like the sweat of the victims.
And this is why you do it—listen
at the outskirts of what our species
has accomplished, listen until the world is flat
again, and you are standing on its edge.
This is why you hold them in your arms, allowing
their snot to smear your skin, their sour
breath to mist your face. You listen
to slash the membrane that divides us, to plant
the hard shiny seed of yourself
in the common earth. You crank
open the rusty hinge of your heart
like an old beach umbrella. Because God
is not a flash of diamond light. God is
the kicked child, the child
who rocks alone in the basement,
the one fucked so many times
she does not know her name, her mind
burning like a star.
The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
Sleeping Next to the Man on the Plane
I’m not well. Neither is he.
Periodically he pulls out a handkerchief
and blows his nose. I worry
about germs, but appreciate how he shares
the armrest—especially
considering his size—too large
to lay the tray over his lap.
His seatbelt barely buckles. At least
he doesn’t have to ask for an extender
for which I imagine him grateful. Our upper arms
press against each other, like apricots growing
from the same node. My arm is warm
where his touches it. I close my eyes.
In the chilly, oxygen-poor air, I am glad
to be close to his breathing mass.
We want our own species. We want
to lie down next to our own kind.
Even here in this metal encumbrance, hurtling
improbably 30,000 feet above the earth,
with all this civilization—down
to the chicken-or-lasagna in their
environmentally-incorrect packets,
even as the woman behind me is swiping
her credit card on the phone embedded
in my headrest and the folks in first
are watching their individual movies
on personal screens, I lean
into this stranger, seeking primitive comfort—
heat, touch, breath—as we slip
into the ancient vulnerability of sleep.
I Love the Way Men Crack
I love the way men crack
open when their wives leave them,
their sheaths curling back like the split
shells of roasted chestnuts, exposing
the sweet creamy meat. They call you
and unburden their hearts the way a woman
takes off her jewels, the heavy
pendant earrings, the stiff lace gown and corset,
and slips into a loose kimono.
It’s like you’ve both had a couple shots
of really good scotch and snow is falling
in the cone of light under the street lamp—
large slow flakes that float down in the opalescent glow.
They tell you all the pain pressed into their chests,
their disappointed penises, their empty hands.
As they sift through the betrayals and regrets,
their shocked realization of how hard they tried,
the way they shouldered the yoke
with such stupid good faith,
they grow younger and younger. They cry
with the unselfconsciousness of children.
When they hug you, they cling.
Like someone who’s needed glasses for a long time—
and finally got them—they look around
just for the pleasure of it: the detail,
the sharp edges of what the world has to offer.
And when they fall in love again, it only gets better.
Their hearts are stuffed full as eclairs
and the custard oozes out at a touch.
They love her, they love you, they love everyone.
They drag out all the musty sorrows and joys
from the basement where they’ve been shoved
with mitts and coin collections. They tell you
things they’ve never told anyone.
Fresh from loving her, they come glowing
like souls slipping into the bodies
of babies about to be born.
Then a year goes by. Or two.
Like broken bones, they knit back together.
They grow like grass and bushes and trees
after a forest fire, covering the seared earth.
Getting My Hands on My Mother’s Body
I go to my mother in the hospital
like a child on the first day of school.
I watch for my stop on the train,
my small bag of books on my lap.
And she is alive there. Pale
and mottled as the underside of flounder.
Her eyes a
re closed, and as I get closer
I see tiny white flakes at the roots
of her sparse lashes, like bits of shell
at the shoreline. Her body rises
and falls like a calm ocean.
“Have you eaten?” she asks.
My tasks are so simple, I master them at once.
The ice machine, the hot water dispenser,
the apartment-size refrigerator with three kinds of juice.
After the bedpan, I wet a washcloth
and she wipes each finger delicately.
In the afternoon, I knit.
If she’s feeling up to it, she tells me stories.
How Harry used to save his candy,
then taunt her as he nibbled each
microscopic, languorous bite.
And in high school, in an aberration of bravado,
she wrote Love ’Em and Leave ’Em
on the back of her yellow slicker
and had to wear it all four years.
Today I cut her toenails.
It’s a delicate job. A nick
could mean gangrene.
As a child, I’d begged for this.
She let me fix her up with mascara and rouge,
but drew the line at toes.
“Cut my hair,” she’d say, “I need my feet to work.”
I position the clipper precisely
at each thick nail, yellowed as old ivory.
There is no talking now. I concentrate
as though I’m cutting the facets of the Hope Diamond.
Afterward, she lets me smooth
lotion into her lumpy feet. About massage,
she always said, “I don’t want anyone mauling me.”
But this once, like a woman who’s refused
a suitor so many times he’s given up hope,
she relents, and I rub the old arches,
the callused heels, circle knobby ankle bones
and slip my fingers gently between the toes
with which she’s entrusted me.
I think there must be something more to say.
But she’s already told me she’s not afraid
to die. And the rest, even I know, is obvious.
While she sleeps, I read
A Brief History of Time. I don’t entirely
understand how the twins are different ages
when one returns from her voyage
at the speed of light. But I’ve got redshift
and the Doppler effect down cold
and it’s tranquil now
to read Hawking’s patient discussion