" The Aftermath

When the fierce pure pleasure
has clawed through, ripped open
my tent of separateness,
I lay in my lover's arms, weeping
and exposed. I can't help seeing

my sister, new widow
whose heart hangs
heavy, a side of beef
in the ice box of her chest.
I imagine her entering
a bedroom like this, maples
flaming beyond the window
against a perfectly useless blue sky.

And then my mother-in-law
stops at the library on the way home
from her husband’s funeral,
picks up the book they've been holding.
It sits in the passenger seat
while she stares at the windshield, stunned,
a bird flown into glass.

Even my friend whose wife hasn’t died yet
appears in this sex-drenched air. Tears
pool in the shallows under his eyes.
If his soul were a tin can, it would be sliced,
the thick soup leaking out.

The night is soaked with suffering.
My dumb body, sprung open, can’t tell
the difference between this blaze of pleasure
and the sorrow it drags in.
As I gaze out into the gathering darkness
it seems I almost comprehend
the mystery, glimpse the water of life
pouring through my form into theirs,
theirs back to mine, misery and ecstasy
swirled like the blue white planet
seen from space,

but it lasts less than a moment--
the arms of my own dear one
haul me back into my body, her flesh
so ostentatiously alive. "

― Ellen Bass