by Ellen Bass
about whether the universe is expanding,
contracting, or staying the same.
And What If I Spoke of Despair
And what if I spoke of despair—who doesn’t
feel it? Who doesn’t know the way it seizes,
leaving us limp, deafened by the slosh
of our own blood, rushing
through the narrow, personal
channels of grief. It’s beauty
that brings it on, calls it out from the wings
for one more song. Rain
pooled on a fallen oak leaf, reflecting
the pale cloudy sky, dark canopy
of foliage not yet fallen. Or the red moon
in September, so large you have to pull over
at the top of Bayona and stare, like a photo
of a lover in his uniform, not yet gone;
or your own self, as a child,
on that day your family stayed
at the sea, watching the sun drift down,
lazy as a beach ball, and you fell asleep with sand
in the crack of your smooth behind.
That’s when you can’t deny it. Water. Air.
They’re still here, like a mother’s palms,
sweeping hair off our brow, her scent
swirling around us. But now your own
car is pumping poison, delivering its fair
share of destruction. We’ve created a salmon
with the red, white, and blue shining on one side.
Frog genes spliced into tomatoes—as if
the tomato hasn’t been humiliated enough.
I heard a man argue that genetic
engineering was more dangerous
than a nuclear bomb. Should I be thankful
he was alarmed by one threat, or worried
he’d gotten used to the other? Maybe I can’t
offer you any more than you can offer me—
but what if I stopped on the trail, with shreds
of manzanita bark lying in russet scrolls
and yellow bay leaves, little lanterns
in the dim afternoon, and cradled despair
in my arms, the way I held my own babies
after they’d fallen asleep, when there was no
reason to hold them, only
I didn’t want to put them down.
Insomnia
All over the world, people can’t sleep.
In different time zones, they are lying awake,
bodies still, minds trudging along like child laborers.
They worry about bills. They worry
whether the shoes they just bought
are really too small. One’s husband died,
her son left for college, and she doesn’t
know how to program the VCR.
Another was beaten by her husband.
One is planning a getaway.
One holding stolen goods.
One’s on the plaid couch in ICU. His daughter,
it turned out, actually does have a brain tumor
even though the doctor said they’d do the MRI just
to rule it out. The woman on the other couch
is snoring—which is strangely soothing—
evidence that people do sleep.
Some are lying on Charisma sheets.
Some in hammocks. Some in jail. Some
under bridges. One is at the North Pole
studying the impact of pollution.
A man in Massachusetts thinks about a lover
he once had in Dar es Salaam and the jasmine
blossoms she strung along the shaft of a silver
pin, fastened in her hair at night. Coincidentally,
the lover, now in Rome, remembers
looking out the window over the sink
when she was washing dishes. He was reading
in a lawn chair and she thought how,
perhaps for the first time, she wasn’t lonely.
Some are too cold. Some
too hot. Some hungry. Some in pain.
Some are in hotels listening to people having sex
in the next room. Some are crying.
One the cat woke up
and now she’s worried about the rash
she noticed in the evening and wonders
if her daughter, who’s afraid to swim,
should be pushed.
Some get up. Others stay in bed.
They eat Oreo’s or drink wine—or both.
Many read. A few make intricate
Halloween costumes: a peacock
with eight real feathers in the tail.
Some check their e-mail. They try
sleep tapes, hypnosis, drugs.
And listen to their clocks tick, smartly
as women in high heels.
Those who can, cling to their mates,
an ear pressed to those neighboring lungs like a
stethoscope, hoping to catch a ride
on the steady sleep breath of the other, to be carried
like a seed on the body of the one who is able.
Right now, in Japan, dawn is coming
and everyone who’s been up all night
is relieved. They can stop trying.
In Guatemala, though, the insomniacs are just
getting started and have the whole
night ahead of them. It’s like a wave
at the baseball stadium, hands
around the world.
So here’s a prayer
for the wakeful, the souls who can’t rest:
As you lie with eyes
open or closed, may something
comfort you—a mockingbird, a breeze, the smell
of crushed mint, Chopin’s Nocturnes,
your child’s birth, a kiss,
or even me—in my chilly kitchen
with my coat over my nightgown—thinking of you.
Notes
“Pay for It,” p. 25: Robert Bly, Iron John (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1990) p. 176.
“If There Is No God,” p. 29: Lyrics by Dorothy Fields; music by Jimmy McHugh.
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications in which these works or earlier versions of them previously appeared:
Alaska Quarterly Review: “Why People Murder”;
The Beloit Poetry Journal: “I Love the Way Men Crack”;
Bridges: “Guilt”;
Comstock Review: “Tigers and People”;
DoubleTake: “Jack Gottlieb’s in Love”;
Field: “God and the G-Spot,” “His Teeth”;
The Greensboro Review: “Marriage Without Sex,” “Pay for It”;
Kalliope: “Birds Do It,” “Everything on the Menu”;
Mangrove: “Poem to My Sex at Fifty-One”;
The Missouri Review: “And What If I Spoke of Despair”;
Nimrod: “Can’t Get Over Her,” “Mighty Strong Poems,” “Phone Therapy”;
The Paterson Literary Review: “Backdoor Karaoke,” “If,” “Sleeping Next to the Man on the Plane”;
Porter Gulch Review: “Laundry”;
Piedmont Literary Review: “In My Hands”;
Quarry West: “Sometimes, After Making Love”;
Red Rock: “The Moon”;
Sojourner: “Getting My Hands on My Mother’s Body,” “The Sad Truth,” “Working in the Garden”;
The Sun: “Worry”;
Tribes: “Remodeling the Bathroom”;
Women’s Studies Quarterly: “If There Is No God”;
ZYZZYVA: “Tulip Blossoms.”
“Bearing Witness” appears in Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America (University of Iowa Press); “Sometimes, After Making Love” appears in Intimate Kisses: The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure (New World Library); “For My Daughter on Her Twenty-First Birthday” appears as “Mules of Love” in Baby Blessings: Prayers and Poems Celebrating Mothers and Babies (Harmony Books); “The Thin
g Is” appears in Bedside Prayers (HarperCollins), Bless the Day (Kodansha), and Prayers for a Thousand Years (HarperSan Francisco); “After Our Daughter’s Wedding” and “God and the G-Spot” appear in Women Artists Datebook (Syracuse Cultural Workers).
“Can’t Get Over Her,” “Mighty Strong Poems,” and “Phone Therapy” were selected for the 2000 Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman.
“And What If I Spoke of Despair” was selected for the 2002 Larry Levis Editor’s Prize for Poetry from The Missouri Review.
My sincere gratitude to all my students, teachers, and friends, with special thanks to Florence Howe, Lucy Diggs, Michael Ponsor, and Charlotte Raymond for early and continuing support; to Sharon Olds for the right words at the right time; to Kim Addonizio, Joe Millar, and Thorn Ward for generous and insightful critique; and most of all, to Dorianne Laux, without whom my poems would still be in their pajamas, sipping coffee, trying to wake up.
About the Author
Ellen Bass co-edited the groundbreaking book, No More Masks!: An Anthology of Poems by Women and has published four previous volumes of poetry, I’m Not Your Laughing Daughter, Of Separateness and Merging, For Earthly Survival, and Our Stunning Harvest. Her nonfiction books include I Never Told Anyone, Free Your Mind, and The Courage to Heal, which has been translated into nine languages. Among her awards are the Elliston Book Award from the University of Cincinnati, The Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman, and the Larry Levis Editor’s Prize from The Missouri Review. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA, where she has taught creative writing since 1974.
BOA EDITIONS, LTD.
AMERICAN POETS CONTINUUM SERIES
No. 1
The Fuhrer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 2
She
M. L. Rosenthal
No. 3
Living With Distance
Ralph J. Mills, Jr.
No. 4
Not Just Any Death
Michael Waters
No. 5
That Was Then: New and Selected Poems
Isabella Gardner
No. 6
Things That Happen Where There Aren’t Any People
William Stafford
No. 7
The Bridge of Change: Poems 1974–1980
John Logan
No. 8
Signatures
Joseph Stroud
No. 9
People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949–1983
Louis Simpson
No. 10
Yin
Carolyn Kizer
No. 11
Duhamel: Ideas of Order in Little Canada
Bill Tremblay
No. 12
Seeing It Was So
Anthony Piccione
No. 13
Hyam Plutzik: The Collected Poems
No. 14
Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969–1980
Lucille Clifton
No. 15
Next: New Poems
Lucille Clifton
No. 16
Roxa: Voices of the Culver Family
William B. Patrick
No. 17
John Logan: The Collected Poems
No. 18
Isabella Gardner: The Collected Poems
No. 19
The Sunken Lightship
Peter Makuck
No. 20
The City in Which I Love You
Li-Young Lee
No. 21
Quilting: Poems 1987–1990
Lucille Clifton
No. 22
John Logan: The Collected Fiction
No. 23
Shenandoah and Other Verse Plays
Delmore Schwartz
No. 24
Nobody Lives on Arthur Godfrey Boulevard
Gerald Costanzo
No. 25
The Book of Names: New and Selected Poems
Barton Sutter
No. 26
Each in His Season
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 27
Wordworks: Poems Selected and New
Richard Kostelanetz
No. 28
What We Carry
Dorianne Laux
No. 29
Red Suitcase
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 30
Song
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
No. 31
The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 32
For the Kingdom
Anthony Piccione
No. 33
The Quicken Tree
Bill Knott
No. 34
These Upraised Hands
William B. Patrick
No. 35
Crazy Horse in Stillness
William Heyen
No. 36
Quick, Now, Always
Mark Irwin
No. 37
I Have Tasted the Apple
Mary Crow
No. 38
The Terrible Stories
Lucille Clifton
No. 39
The Heat of Arrivals
Ray Gonzalez
No. 40
Jimmy & Rita
Kim Addonizio
No. 41
Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum
Michael Waters
No. 42
Against Distance
Peter Makuck
No. 43
The Night Path
Laurie Kutchms
No. 44
Radiography
Bruce Bond
No. 45
At My Ease: Uncollected Poems of the Fifties and Sixties
David Ignatow
No. 46
Trillium
Richard Foerster
No. 47
Fuel
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 48
Gratitude
Sam Hamill
No. 49
Diana, Charles, & the Queen
William Heyen
No. 50
Plus Shipping
Bob Hicok
No. 51
Cabato Sentora
Ray Gonzalez
No. 52
We Didn’t Come Here for This
William B. Patrick
No. 53
The Vandals
Alan Michael Parker
No. 54
To Get Here
Wendy Mnookin
No. 55
Living Is What I Wanted: Last Poems
David Ignatow
No. 56
Dusty Angel
Michael Blumenthal
No. 57
The Tiger Iris
Joan Swift
No. 58
White City
Mark Irwin
No. 59
Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969–1999
Bill Knott
No. 60
Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems: 1988–2000
Lucille Clifton
No. 61
Tell Me
Kim Addonizio
No. 62
Smoke
Dorianne Laux
No. 63
Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems
Michael Waters
No. 64
Rancho Notorious
Richard Garcia
No. 65
Jam
Joe-Anne McLaughlin
No. 66
A. Poulin, Jr. Selected Poems
Edited, with an Introduction by Michael Waters
No. 67
Small Gods of Grief
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
No. 68
Book of My Nights
Li-Young Lee
No. 69
Tulip Farms and Leper Colonies
Charles Harper Webb
No. 70
Double Going