Lisa Ray Instagram – AND WHAT IF I SPOKE OF DESPAIR by Ellen Bass And what if I spoke of despair—who doesn’t feel it? Who doesn’t know the way it seizes, leaving us limp, deafened by the slosh of our own blood, rushing through the narrow, personal channels of grief. It’s beauty that brings it on, calls it out from the wings for one more song. Rain pooled on a fallen oak leaf, reflecting the pale cloudy sky, dark canopy of foliage not yet fallen. Or the red moon in September, so large you have to pull over at the top of Bayona and stare, like a photo of a lover in his uniform, not yet gone; or your own self, as a child, on that day your family stayed at the sea, watching the sun drift down, lazy as a beach ball, and you fell asleep with sand in the crack of your smooth behind. That’s when you can’t deny it. Water. Air. They’re still here, like a mother’s palms, sweeping hair off our brow, her scent swirling around us. But now your own car is pumping poison, delivering its fair share of destruction. We’ve created a salmon with the red, white, and blue shining on one side. Frog genes spliced into tomatoes—as if the tomato hasn’t been humiliated enough. I heard a man argue that genetic engineering was more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. Should I be thankful he was alarmed by one threat, or worried he’d gotten used to the other? Maybe I can’t offer you any more than you can offer me— but what if I stopped on the trail, with shreds of manzanita bark lying in russet scrolls and yellow bay leaves, little lanterns in the dim afternoon, and cradled despair in my arms, the way I held my own babies after they’d fallen asleep, when there was no reason to hold them, only I didn’t want to put them down. From MULES OF LOVE, Boa Editions Feitroun, Mont-Liban, Lebanon