Poem of the Week, by Ellen Bass
- Son to his little sister, who was raging about a boy in her first-grade class: But maybe he acts like that because he’s sad. You never know what his home life is like.
- Older daughter, age six, to me during a discussion of what death was, after I had told her that if I died she would be very sad but she would still be okay: No I wouldn’t be sad. Me: . . . you wouldn’t? Her: Nope. If you die then I’ll die too. I can’t be alive without you.
- Younger daughter, the first day I ever met her in a far-off land, when they handed her away from everything and everyone she had ever known and into my arms and her face screwed up with terror and confusion: Shhh, don’t cry, little daughter, don’t cry. We’re going to have so much fun. I promise you. I promise you. I promise you.
For My Daughter on Her Twenty-First Birthday
– Ellen Bass
When they laid you in the crook
of my arms like a bouquet and I looked
into your eyes, dark bits of evening sky,
I thought, of course this is you,
like a person who has never seen the sea
can recognize it instantly.
They pulled you from me like a cork
and all the love flowed out. I adored you
with the squandering passion of spring
that shoots green from every pore.
You dug me out like a well. You lit
the deadwood of my heart. You pinned me
to the earth with the points of stars.
I was sure that kind of love would be
enough. I thought I was your mother.
How could I have known that over and over
you would crack the sky like lightning,
illuminating all my fears, my weaknesses, my sins.
Massive the burden this flesh
must learn to bear, like mules of love.
For more information about Ellen Bass, please click here.
When I was 20 I flew to Taipei with a plane ticket and the hope of finding a place to live and somewhere to study Chinese. I took a cab to a hotel, where I stayed for three days, mostly in the tall narrow box of a bathtub, too scared and lonely and unsure of everything to venture out. Starvation finally drove me down to the lobby. I said, having practiced it over and over, “Wo e si le. Fanguan zai nali?” which translates as “I’m dying of hunger. Where is a restaurant?” The three glasses-wearing Chinese men behind the counter leapt up with cries of concern, led me outside and pointed across the street. Once there I scanned the menu, scrawled on long tendrils of paper pinned to the walls, until I recognized the two characters for potstickers. I ordered 16, at a penny apiece, and ate them all. Those potstickers live in memory, visceral memory, like everything Adrienne Su describes in her wonderful poem below. I still dream about them. 
Last week the painter had a dream in which an old friend, dead in an instant two years ago now, appeared, smiling and so happy to see him. Do you think he came back because he died so fast and he wanted to say goodbye to you? I asked him when he told me about the dream. Who knows? Maybe, the painter said. Either way it was good to see him, happy and healthy. W.S. Merwin has always been a poet of dreams to me, what with his imagery and the way his unpunctuated poems float on the page. His calm voice drifts across the water, and sometimes one of his poems feels exactly right.
Sometimes all I want is a poem that’s rhythm and rhyme, words placed and spaced so they turn into a song inside my head. Langston Hughes does that. So does Dylan Thomas. And so does Mr. Eliot, below. I memorized this poem so that it will always be with me. Poem, you are a voice shaken from the yew-tree, and here I am, replying.
People who have been reading the poem of the week on this blog for years now must think, seeing this week’s selection, Wow, does this woman love Naomi Shihab Nye. And they would be right. Sometimes, walking down the street, I recite lines from her poems, maybe because they’re beautiful, maybe because they make me feel less alone, maybe because they remind me, always, that kindness is all that matters. At a restaurant a couple of weeks ago, a friend said to me, “I read a poem today that I think you would love. It’s by a woman named Naomi something”–and I said, “Naomi Shihab Nye!” Once, a couple of years ago, I saw a tiny notice in the paper that she was giving a talk that very night at a school near me –she lives in Texas and this was in Minneapolis– so I zipped right over. The talk was in a high school classroom and I sat in a chair in the front row. And afterward I asked if she minded a photo. So that’s me, with Naomi my hero, and this concludes my Naomi Shihab Nye story in favor of her beautiful poem, of which I love this line most of all: Each carries a tender spot: Something our lives forgot to give us. 
I wanted to write about why I love this poem so much, but it grabbed me by the throat and told me that it could speak for itself, thanks.
That photo over there to the right is the very long tail of a very large rat that ran over my bare feet as I stood at the stove cooking dinner. The story behind the tail is one of intrigue and horror – me sauteeing vegetables at the stove while chatting with The Painter who was seated behind me, me suddenly feeling a squirrel or a small cat run over my bare feet, me shrieking and whirling around to tell The Painter that a squirrel or a cat had run over my bare feet, The Painter trying desperately to contain his horror because he had witnessed exactly what ran over my bare feet and rats are not cats. 
Alison McGhee 