(Aye, another jolly ol’ bad, bad poem here for ya)
1.
Mountains layered in rows of blue, indigo, and violet
advance and rise between the Pacific Ocean and the Salish Sea
into sunshine as clear as fresh-scrubbed panes of glass.
They uplift the frontier out there,
out west beyond large, old-fashioned kitchen windows.
The day is glorious outside, the Sun shines bright,
there’s snow up high in the Cascades to our east,
and planets and stars align in night skies bereft of moon.
All my friends are out and about doing fun things,
Playing hard up in the mountains and relaxing down in the city.
I, however, sit at home where maritime clouds of silver and gray
hang heavy inside the bones of my mind,
heavier than when those clouds sprawl across Cascadian skies.
Instead of being outside hiking, paddling, climbing, skiing, or
perusing book stores and funky shops with cups of coffee in hand,
I burrow down into the self-isolation of self-partnership gone awry to write horridly-wrought, quasi-autobiographical prose poems and binge
on Netflix videos in a bottomless hunger to
satiate my addiction to online vicariousness.
Energy spent to hold up and push away the weight of heavy clouds
leaves me exhausted, my excitement obliterated, and my wants and desires to get outside into this spectacular and beautiful day buried
under Pyramids of Forgetfulness.
Darkness falls in nearly two hours.
Dark Moon is now Waxing Crescent Luna.
My fingers keep tapping out bad poems
riddled with adjectives, adverbs, cliches, and misplaced pain.
I must step back and away before the Sun dies into the night.
I go now.
East up the hill
I go now,
up the long, big hill to the top of Phinney Ridge
to turn around and look back to the west where
gravity falls as katabatic winds burdened with
not enough time and too much space rush down mountains
and across the seas to push uphill to the ridgetops.
An old, brown and red cup etched with hummingbirds
sits still upon the kitchen table before those large glass windows.
Coffee grows cold in the old cup.
2.
Melancholia blights out brightness of feeling
and blurs emotions into a leadened haze.
Realized in the moment my bodymind has
been depressed for months now.
Waves of numb no-feelings ebb and flow in and out of
sea caves hollowed out from rocky cliffs of mind.
Feels different, this depressive episode does.
All joy has evaporated and what remains is as level as broken concrete.
Feels as embedded as a psychic tumor in the mind
as a plantar wart is embedded in the sole of one’s foot.
Often this psychic tumor mind wart goes away on its own.
Other times it morphs into an encrusted energy cyst.
These psychic tumors seal off emotions from cognition.
Movement gets sidetracked with thoughts.
Been indoors suffering quietly in the shadows all day.
Hey, it’s still glorious outdoors!
I get outside to hike across the neighborhood.
This time I really do go uphill.
Not just to imagine doing so but to actually walk up the steep hill.
I look around and begin to smile.
The air feels dry as leaves and as cold as snow.
Contemplation burns away the fog of rumination.
Physical action unlocks access to recessed emotions.
Therein blossoms joy.
William Dudley Bass
Saturday 30 November 2019
Revised Sat 21 Dec 2019
Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Sol
Copyright © 2019 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.