#MIDDLEBURY
Any Common Desolation
Ellen Bass
can be enough to make you look up
at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
that survived the rains and frost, shot
with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
would rip it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive. The sound
of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant
animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.
The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.
Warm socks. You remember your mother,
her precision a ceremony, as she gathered
the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,
drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath
can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,
the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything
you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves
and, like a needle slipped into your vein –
that sudden rush of the world.
About this poem
“A friend once told me that the beauty of two colors-the right two colors – next to each other was as wonderful to her as an orgasm. During a rough time in my life – prolonged family illness – I was sitting in the yard, and when I saw a leaf glowing in the blue sky like a little lantern, I thought of her. And I felt how the vivid life of the physical world can amaze us even when we feel inconsolable.” – Ellen Bass
About Ellen Bass
Ellen Bass is the author of “Like a Beggar” (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). She teaches in the M.F.A. program at Pacific University and lives in Santa Cruz, Calif.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Ellen Bass. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
