Saturday, July 25, 2009

The Thing Is - Ellen Bass

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.

1 comment:

red clay said...

i want to buy you something.
i have been cribbing from you long enough.
not a house or a car or a liver, now. but something small and shiny.
like a silver spoon, a gold tooth, or a glass eye. cds or dvds, a book or flowers would suffice.
surely you have a p.o. box.
something that works for paypal.
something that leaves you AND me amnonymouse.