Night. A single star
Burns, smudged by smog, smokelike clouds
Then blotted out. Dark
*
As my mood when you
Are gone – warmth and light snuffed out
Like a single flame
*
As the waxing moon
Is smothered behind storm clouds
Passing blind below
*
We absent ourselves
In darkness, deep depressions
Hiding from the sun
*
We dig a hole in
The plot of our own story –
Gotta stop digging:
*
Look up, wrap ourselves
In glowing glory, endless
Potentiality
*
Sea, sky, stars and moon
And this solitary earth
Spinning round the sun
*
That storm seething past
Stokes our sluggish blood till time
Reignites the sky.
*
**
*
Omm
September 2018
This is a powerful poem that opens up some powerful tensions. I’m reading this two ways at least:- in the first, there’s a circularity as one depression leads to another; in the second, this offers a way out of depression – by stopping digging the hole in the plot of our own stories, we can look up and get a better perspective on our lives, and let the light come flooding back, reigniting the sky..
Thank you for your thoughts, James!
Beautiful and unsettling. The poem skirts the edge between depression and its resolution in light and creativity, sketching or adumbrating the connection between the two.
Thank you, Amaya, I’m glad you found some beauty in the poem.
– “glowing glory” – “time / Reignites the sky”
– How nature and cosmology can help overcome depression with their power.
– Although it can also be nature that snuffs out the warmth and light, to begin with.
These haiku speak to a similar dualism.
Thank you, Scarlett, for these thoughts.