The morning after a relationship of depth and importance that bent for a long time under the weight of its weight had finally broken with a tired drill, I opened the furnace to find a month's worth of pottery shattered – two pieces had exploded, the debris had ruined the rest. All that medium, all that glitter, all the hours of pressing letterforms into wet mud – it's all glittery bits. And in the meantime it was spring outside and a little girl in blue rain boots was jumping in the pool, smashing the light from the clouds with great joy.
And I thought, this is all there is: brokenness, separation, openness.
Life.
It's not an easy assignment, life. Waking up in the wake of life that brings us closer to our days, we are awake with the knowledge that on one side of the neighborhood ICE trucks are arresting people and on the other side of the planet children are being shot, while outside the first birds of spring are singing and everywhere people are loving each other and in some faraway places there is a valley with a star that lives under the mountains. And somehow, some way, it all has to come together in one world where we, in all our togetherness, have to live this one life.
Ellen Bass remembers all this in her beautiful poem “Any Common Ruin,” originally published in the daily poetry journal of the Academy of American Poets and later included in the James Crews anthology. How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope (public library), shared here with Ellen's blessing.
ANY ORDINARY DISPOSAL
by Ellen Bassit would be enough to make you look up
on the yellow leaves of the apple tree, a few
which survived the rains and snow, shot
and the afternoon sun. They glowed deeply
orange-gold against blue, single bird
he can tear it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it is nothing
knowing even one minute is alive. The sound
of an oar in a rowlock or oar
an animal that tears grass. The smell of ground ginger.
Ruby neon for a liquor store sign.
Warm socks. Do you miss your mother,
His precision is the event, as he is together
white cotton, slipped it over your toes,
drew the heel, closed the cuff. Breathing
you can untie when you walk in your muddy yard,
a great dip pours the night down upon you, and everything
you're afraid, everything you can't bear, melts away
and, like a needle slipped into your vein –
that sudden rush of the world.
Fill up on Henry James on how to stop waiting and start living and Hermann Hesse on how to live more, then revisit Ellen's wonderful poem “How to Apologise.” And if you're looking to open up about your poetry, I couldn't recommend Living Room Handicrafts more heartily.
