The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass

(published in her 2002 book, Mules of Love, BOA Editions)

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 weighs you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body understand this...