If You Knew by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

If You Knew

Every now and then, something will happen that makes me think of this poem. It was, in fact, the one that inspired a poem about my father I had been trying to write for two years after his death. What if you knew you’d be the last / to touch someone? Does that question not stop you in your tracks? I was the last person with my father when he died, so yes, I think about these things.

She reminds us how in the small irritations of occasional slowness, rudeness, or in moments of presence with other people we don’t really notice, we can forget, I don’t remember / they’re going to die. And then the poignant story of her friends’ aunt and the waiter who kissed / her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left. That last touch before she dropped dead on the sidewalk – yes, such things really happen.

Then she fiercely yet respectfully asks hard questions: how close to such moments do you have to get before you might wake up? And the final one: What would people look like / if we could see them as they are? Would we see how they are soaked in honey, sweet and reckless in their living, pinned against time – because we don’t know how much time there is.

This is the most elegant wake-up poem I can think of – hard to just read and forget. It asks only that we pay attention to life in the moment. What if you knew you’d be the last?

Riverbank Ceremony: Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio by Laura Grace Weldon

Step out on mossy water’s-edge rock,
   let the river’s rush take you
   beyond yourself.
When you’re ready, kneel,
   and select a secret
   from the heavy chandelier
   inside your chest.
Whisper it to the water.
She will carry it in her molecules
   around the bend, out of sight.

Your secret will
steam from tea sipped in Vietnam,
slide down an antelope’s throat
trickle from a glacier in Greenland,
hurl from cumulonimbus clouds
   onto cobbled streets in Belgium,
trill through secret underground paths,
rise up a redwood’s trunk,

turn into a silver helix
   twisting from your bathroom faucet,
   translucent, transformed,
   washing over you.

Riverbank Ceremony

Perhaps you have the good fortune to live close by a river or even a stream, but if not, your imagination will take you there in Weldon’s poem. Have you ever stood by the edge of moving water and let the river’s rush take you / beyond yourself ? It’s the kind of moment that can both take you out of yourself and bring you into the moment to select a secret / from the heavy chandelier inside your chest. If we whisper this secret to the water, it will be carried around the bend, out of sight.

Then comes a marvelous travelogue of places your liquid secret might visit: steam from tea sipped in Vietnam, to a trickle from a glacier in Greenland, to rain onto cobbled streets in Belgium, from antelopes to water rising in redwoods’ trunks, until it becomes a silver helix / twisting from your bathroom faucet. I love this idea of my deepest secrets traveling through water around the world, becoming translucent, transformed.

What do you think? What secrets do you want to whisper to the nearest rushing water, even a small creek, that might allow this transformation? A small ritual to wash through you.

March 1912 by Natasha Trethewey

At last we are near

breaking the season, shedding

our coats, the gray husk

of winter.  Each tree

trembles with new leaves, tiny

blossoms, the flashy

dress of spring. I am

aware now of its coming

as I’ve never been—

the wet grass throbbing

with crickets, insistent, keen

as desire.  Now,

I feel what trees must—

budding, green sheaths splitting—skin

that no longer fits.

March 1912

Here, it is April and we are near / breaking the season, winter’s breath still chilling the days’ beginnings and endings. I have shed my winter parka though I oscillate erratically from heavier to lighter spring jackets. Each tree trembles with new leaves, though in truth, most of those leaves are still well tucked into their protective wraps, the flashy / dress of spring still in our imaginations.

I am / aware now of its coming / as I’ve never been. Though there are obvious outward signs, like birdsong and streetsweepers and bright flashes of crocus, it’s more a feeling, a sensation in the body that tells me we are moving into a new season, new possibilities, insistent, keen / as desire.

Finally, the poet invites us into the experience of being a tree, budding, green sheaths splitting – our bodies opening to the new growth of spring, sap rising, stepping out of our winter bodies, skin / that no longer fits. What tree would you like to be? What is yearning to break into leaf?

P.S. If you are wondering about the date in the title, it comes from a 2002 collection of Trethewey’s poems titled Bellocq’s Ophelia. This poem has been written in haiku stanzas of 5-7-5 which sadly I was not able to reproduce here, but thought you would be interested to know.

Thank You by Ross Gay

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

Thank You

I can never be reminded too often to express my appreciation for all that is around me, even, especially, when it may seem that life is too hard to bear. In this concise poem, Ross Gay gives us this message with viseral imagery. How often do you find yourself half naked / and barefoot in the frosty grass, feeling beneath your feet the earth’s great sonorous moan, the resonant message of you are the air of the now and gone?

These are the rare moments of awareness of how brief and precious is life, that all you love will turn to dust. Pay attention he says, but do not respond in anger or in fear; he says it three times to be sure we hear the message. Instead, curl your toes / into the grass – feel that winter-chilled vegetation waking up your senses, see the puff of vapour from your lips in the cool, early air.

He invites us to walk through the garden’s dormant splendor, before the new growth becomes lush, just imagining it in all its magnificence. Then, he tells us, there are only two words needed: thank you, repeated for emphasis. Such a simple offering to the day, so many opportunities to give thanks. Say only, thank you.