“How to Apologize Ellen Bass Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeleton you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying silver carp that's invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling the others into oblivion. If you don't live near a lake, you'll have to travel. Walking is best and shows you mean it, but you could take a train and let yourself be soothed by the rocking on the rails. It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human. When my mother was in the hospital, my daughter and I had to clear out the home she wouldn't return to. Then she recovered and asked, incredulous, How could you have thrown out all my shoes? So you'll need a boat. You could rent or buy, but, for the sake of repairing the world, build your own. Thin strips of Western red cedar are perfect, but don't cut a tree. There'll be a demolished barn or downed trunk if you venture further. And someone will have a mill. And someone will loan you tools. The perfume of sawdust and the curls that fall from your plane will sweeten the hours. Each night we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night we could dream back everything lost. So grill the pale flesh. Unharness yourself from your weary stories. Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt. There is much to fear as a creature caught in time, but this is safe. You need no defense. This is just another way to know you are alive. “How to Apologize” originally appeared in The New Yorker (March 15, 2021).” PoemForgiveness Author:Ellen Bass
“The past is so far away, but it flickers, then cleaves the night. The bones of the past splinter between our teeth. This is our life, love. Why did I think it would be anything less than too much of everything?” LifePastPoetryPoemOverwhelmingness Author:Ellen Bass
“The woman who was saving iguanas opened the cage of the newest arrival and asked if I wanted to hold him. She showed me how to slip my forearm under his scaly belly and bring him to my chest, not unlike soothing a colicky baby, though the iguana showed no distress and breathed evenly against my body, not cold, not warm, as if he didn’t mind being suspended in a stranger’s arms, as if nothing could surprise him in the tumble of the world he’d been swept up into. The iguana was strapped into a thin black harness that made him look like a leatherman from the Castro, an old queer with spiked hair and his wrinkled dewlap. I’d had a bad day, well really a bad year, and the one before that wasn’t good either. My child wasn’t talking to me and I’d stopped talking to everyone else. The iguana was still as a monk in prayer, all that moved were his ruched eyelids which opened and closed over his orange eyes. His chest filled and emptied with the dry hot air we shared. I thought to myself, even this is something.” PoetryHopeNaturePoemComfortWildlifeIguanas Author:Ellen Bass
