Poem by Ellen Bass
To love life, to love it
even when you have no stomach for it.
Everything you’ve held dear,
crumbles like burnt paper in you 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 lung;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body with stand 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.
-Ellen Bass
