6/25

Driving home, again, rounding Philly
Listening to the radio, I hear a poet 
Reading her work:


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.


The Thing Is by Ellen Bass from her book Mules of Love