dverse is looking at madness today. Not a condition I’m acquainted with, but mild depression is something most of us have experienced at one time or another.
There are days when only trees will do,
or the way the dead leaves lie so still beneath,
and the stream trickles by with its watery song.
Those days, birdsong is the only common sense,
and the flash of a wary creature almost seen
is to be treasured, a lifeline.
Days pass and nights full of stars sooth
and draw the eye away from the black holes
in the head into the glittering cradle of the sky.
But the day I dread is the day I raise my hand
to pluck a ripe fig, blackbird crashing in the hedge,
the sky full of swallows and I let it fall,
because not even this immensity is enough
to drive the stuttering engine one moment further.