Poetry in Ordinary Time: Ellen Bass

Another 'thank you' to Parker Palmer for sharing this poem...a soothing balm for those of us feeling that indeed, "...it is a hard time to be human"...from Ellen Bass.


The World Has Need of You

"everything here
 seems to need us" - Rainer Maria Rilke

I can hardly imagine it,
As I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arm swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It's a hard time to be human.  We know too much
and too little.  Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs?  The gulls?
If you've managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn't care.
But when Newton's apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple.

 

- Ellen Bass from her book, Like a Beggar, Copper Canyon Press, 2014

You can listen to Garrison Keillor read this poem aloud on the June 25, 2016 edition of The Writer's Almanac.  (Please note that the poem comes at the end of the podcast.)