Gophers

I've tried to kill the gophers. On stained
knees, up to my elbows in their earthen
tunnels, setting the green toothed trap, my human
scent masked with anise oil, then sweetened
with leaves of the sweet potato vine my neighbor maintains
they can't resist, a rodent version of caviar and champagne.
But the dead must do some arcane
transmission of wisdom to the living. They've eaten
every fleck of leaf, sprung each trap with cool distain.
They're marvels, miniature Charlemagnes. Then
suddenly, I hear it--like a tiny microphone's hidden
under the dirt. You couldn't mistake this blazon
for anything else, like Louis Armstrong singing
What A Wonderful World. But when
the little fists of four leaf clover begin
to tremble, I'm confused not to feel the thrill of the hunt, the cocaine
rush in my veins. I pick up the shovel--I've slain
them like this--a hose down the hole, then bash their brains,
but my will wanes. It seems pointless to kill one denizen
when there must be dozens taking the A-train,
just trying to get to Sugar Hill. Listen.
It's not an Elizabeth Bishop fish thing.
It's not Galway's bear or Stafford's deer on the mountain,
not Kunitz's whale or Donald Hall's paean,
scratching the  jowls of a cooked pig. I look into the grainy
hole the gopher's dug with his skinny
incisors, this corridor between
worlds, and it's the sound that stops me. That unseen
small tearing of the roots on such a serene
morning. I'm watching the grass shiver. I'm leaning
over, straining to hear it again.

Happiness

I had a student once who was so depressed
she wanted to die. She was a young single mother,
lonely, poor, watching other girls
go to parties and bars while she was home
cutting the crusts off peanut butter sandwiches,
reading The Berenstain Bears And the Bad Dream.
Then she collapsed with heart disease
and spent the next few years waiting for a transplant.
The strange thing is, now she was happy.
Every day, almost every breath, was semi-ecstatic.
She was a modern day Chicana Rumi,
hanging out with the Beloved, grateful just to touch His hem.
I find I'm telling myself all the time now,
look how you lift one foot and then the other,
all the nerves and synapses firing together.
Look how you reach for a carton of blueberries
and eat each dusky globe, one by one.
Look at the spotted dog tied to the newsstand,
drops of saliva sliding off his tongue
and the cracked Bic lighter in the gutter,
shining a watery turquoise blue.
Even when your heart is a used teabag
you can lie down in a warm bed,
even though you cry half the night
with the window open a little
to let in the stars.

© Copyright, Ellen Bass.
All rights reserved.