From the Santa Cruz poet and winner of the Lambda Literary Award, a selection titled “Carpe Diem in The Backyard.”
Carpe Diem in the Backyard
Here we are, I say to my dog
who inclines his boxy head
then lowers himself to the unmown grass,
pointed tawny leaves scattered in heaps.
This is the white sky of morning,
birds writing their way across it.
What’s the difference if you’re disappointed?
A yellow garden spider strings up rigging
from the chair to the camellia.
A gray bird pecks in the red geraniums.
You know there’s lead in the shafts of his feathers.
Two black shiny beetles fall to the table,
sex to sex, antennae twitching.
The house needs painting.
The stucco’s blotched with trial and error:
pinks like Pepto Bismol,
taupe that could pass for camouflage,
and a what-were-we-thinking royal blue.
The bamboo leaves susurrate in a breeze.
If you close your eyes, the sound could be the river
you find in dreams:
she kissed me
before she left for work in the rusted
blue pickup with the new seat covers.
—Ellen Bass
Ellen Bass’s poetry books include The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press), named a Notable Book of 2007 by the San Francisco Chronicle, and Mules of Love (BOA, 2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award. Her poems have been published in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review and many other journals. Her non-fiction books include The Courage to Heal and Free Your Mind. She teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University and locally in the community. www.ellenbass.com.
Local Poets, Local Inspiration, edited by Robert Sward, appears weekly online and monthly in Santa Cruz Weekly. Selections are by invitation.
