Ellen Bass Quotes

Dead Butterfly
By Ellen Bass
For Months My Daughter Carried
a Dead Monarch In A Quart Mason Jar.
To And From School In Her Backpack,
to Her Only Friend's House. At The Dinner Table
it Sat Like A Guest Alongside The Pot Roast.
She Took It To Bed, Propped By Her Pillow.
Was It The Year Her Brother Was Born?
Was This Her Own Too-fragile Baby
that Had Lived - So Briefly - In Its Glassed World?
Or The Year She Refused To Go To Her Father's House?
Was This The Holding-her-breath Girl She Became There?
This Plump Child In Her Rolled-down Socks
I Sometimes Wanted To Haul Back Inside Me
and Carry Safe Again. What Was Her Fierce
commitment? I Never Understood.
We Just Lived With The Dead Winged Thing
as Part Of Her, As Part Of Us,
weightless In Its Heavy Jar.

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