Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “After Ellen Bass’s ‘Any Common Desolation'” by Kate Marshall Flaherty.

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After Ellen Bass’s “Any Common Desolation“

By Kate Marshall Flaherty

It isn’t nothing to know even one moment alive…

This is difficult— these squares, boxes, faces

of strangers all as nervous as she is. Some

seem to scroll or look away, some sit in dim-

lit basements, some shout mutely

at unseen others offscreen.

It isn’t nothing we are here. It is brave. It is

signing up, and showing up, for this first session,

sharing something secret,

about a loved one with these things we know

and are too shy/scared to say. Three crisp

scarlet letters, sin in this bad naming,

a mean mis-label, a shaming stigma.

It isn’t nothing we are here, and someone

is crying already. Someone else hauling up

a deep breath. Someone else’s screen turns dark,

to show only letters, a name in white type. DBT.

It isn’t nothing, the list of traits we all nod to

glumly, eagerly, anxiously—yes, yeses,

to all the sss sounds and regrets

in sensitive to emotions, dysregulation, outbursts

episodes, stress-induced, silence, self-harm … s-word

ideation … we can’t even say it, in this first session.

But someone does. We nod. Someone whispers

something, oh nothing, but

this isn’t nothing, it is a loved one, a son, a sister,

a sibling, nothing borderline

about this, except loneliness. Peripheries, nothing

personal, we just didn’t understand. Nothing disordered,

just a lovely life in disarray—a wild-flower garden

or turbulent surf, wind-sweeping storm or hollowing hail,

so astonishing when she sees strange knowing in each face

and in the indescribable mosaic that is her son.

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Copyright © kate Marshall Flaherty

Kate Marshall Flaherty’s recent of eight books are “Titch,” Piquant Press 2023, and “Digging,” Aeolus House, 2022. She’s been published in CV2, Vallum, Grain, Room, Trinity Review, The Literary Review of Canada, Event and Tamarack Review. She was shortlisted for the Mitchel Poetry Prize 2021, and Arc’s Poem of the Year 2022. She writes spontaneous “Poems Of the Extraordinary Moment” (P.O.E.M.s) for charity, in person and online, and guides StillPoint Writing and Poetry Editing.

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