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    The Human Line
    The Human Line
    The Human Line
    Ebook97 pages42 minutes

    The Human Line

    By Ellen Bass

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    About this ebook

    - Bass is co-author of million-seller Courage to Heal - Bass considered a pioneer in field of healing from child sexual abuse - Bass has a devoted following - The Human Line confronts many of the profound moral dilemmas of our time—all grounded in human-scale concerns - Bass is popular workshop leader and creative writing teacher - Bass poems have appeared in many national publications including The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., DoubleTake - Who can resist lines like: “A brain / firing one hundred billion neurons / is still bashing its own skull with big rocks.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateDec 25, 2012
    ISBN9781619320000
    The Human Line
    Author

    Ellen Bass

    A pioneer in the field of healing from child sexual abuse, Ellen Bass currently teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University in Oregon. Her poetry books include Mules of Love and The Human Line.

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      Book preview

      The Human Line - Ellen Bass

      ONE

      Sleeping in My Mother’s Bed

      Though she left by ambulance

      my mother’s bed is smooth, the sink dry.

      It’s like a depression in rock,

      the mortar where women ground

      their grain, now scoured clean.

      I brush my teeth with her toothbrush,

      pull her nightgown over my head,

      bring my miniature Jack Daniel’s

      to the freezer, but there’s no ice.

      All the little squares lined up

      empty. So I drink it neat.

      Every night at ten when she locked up

      the store, she’d slip on a gown like this,

      then pour a highball and relax

      with a handful of pretzels or nuts.

      I lie in her bed

      like a fork on a folded napkin,

      perfectly still and alone.

      Here I am, I think, as close

      to my mother as I’ll ever get.

      The imprint of her body lingers

      as if she’d just gotten up to pee.

      I am she, sleeping or not sleeping, the thread

      of my life unwinding, only a few loops

      still curled around the spool.

      When my mother dies, there’ll be nothing

      between me and mortality. The hip

      that bothers me slightly now

      will whine like a wire in high wind

      and be replaced, like hers—all those years

      she shut the door of the walk-in icebox

      with a swing of that good bone.

      And I’ll be awake in a bed like this.

      The clock with oversize numbers ticking,

      the phone with its alarm, the wheelchair

      and commode surrounding me like sentries.

      On my bureau, these very same photos

      will sit propped up, smiling—one section

      for the dead, one for the living—

      more and more crossing over.

      The low ache of the day

      diffused through my body like salt—

      but far from sleep,

      as though sleep were across the ocean

      and I were just setting out

      adrift on my primitive raft.

      Twilight from the Window of My Mother’s Hospital Room

      Light falling, the sky a wash

      of color, I look up

      from my book that fearlessly

      explains the vast empty

      spaces: if an atom

      were the size of a cathedral

      the nucleus might be a sleeping bee.

      We are nearly noncorporeal, flesh

      penetrable as flame.

      The view from the window is not beautiful—

      a red-brick police station,

      a few bony trees, a parking garage

      that grows darker, the people

      illuminated striding to their cars.

      Snow drifts in cones of icy light

      while on CNN the same fires flare,

      over and over the same distant rubble.

      When my mother’s shirred eyelids close

      I ease the volume down.

      In sleep her hand flutters

      as though wind swept through

      the still room and her palm

      weighed no more than a snowflake.

      The stomach tube pumps

      bile into a clear bucket,

      the monitor beeps its frequent warnings,

      and even dozing my mother

      thumbs her morphine pump.

      Still, I like this time of day, tea-colored,

      night steeping into the sky.

      When she wakes I rearrange pillows

      under her knees, tuck her worn sweater

      over her chest where she likes it.

      Then I sit and watch the earth

      slowly roll away from the light.

      On the Air

      The oldies station plays the songs

      it

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