“You may have to break your heart, but it isn’t nothing to know even one moment alive.”
In the aftermath of a profound relationship that had finally crumbled under its own weight, I opened the kiln to find a month’s worth of pottery in ruins — two pieces exploded, scattering shards everywhere. All that dedication, all that artistry in the clay, now lay in broken pieces. Outside, spring was awakening, and a little girl in bright blue rain boots joyfully leaped into a puddle, shattering the reflections of clouds.
And I realized, this is the essence of life: breaking, breaking apart, breaking open.
Breaking alive.
Being alive is a challenging task. Awakening from the stupor that dulls our senses, we come to the realization that on one side of the neighborhood, people are being detained, while on the other side of the globe, children suffer in violence. Yet, outside, the first birds of spring sing, love blooms, and in a distant village, a shepherd sings under a starry sky. All of these experiences must coexist in a single world where we, in all our complexities, navigate our lives.
Ellen Bass addresses this complexity in her moving poem “Any Common Desolation,” featured in The Academy of American Poets’ poem-a-day newsletter and included in James Crews’s inspiring anthology How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, shared here with her blessing.
ANY COMMON DESOLATION
by Ellen Basscan be enough to make you look up
at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
that survived the rains and frost, shot
with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
would rip it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive. The sound
of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant
animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.
The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.
Warm socks. You remember your mother,
hers a ceremony, as she gathered
the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,
drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath
can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,
the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything
you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves
and, like a needle slipped into your vein —
that sudden rush of the world.Complement with Henry James on how to stop waiting and start living and Hermann Hesse on how to be more alive, then revisit Ellen’s magnificent poem “How to Apologize.” If you aim to deepen your understanding of poetry, I highly recommend her Living Room Craft Talks.
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