Reflection

Frouzins – November 2017

Days are shorter,

summer’s voice is softer.

Green chlorophylls return

to their brown towns of branch, cities of trunk,

leaving the pigments of red and gold

to occupy their now vacated

summer holiday accommodations.

I circumnavigate the lake

wishing for myself its calm acceptance –

unruffled surface waters –

in contrast to my many nightmares –

of destiny, of school examinations,

of conflicted family of origin,

of the distant cosmos.

Autumn: medium of quiet messages,

but the dark mantras of winter

overpower its liturgy.

True, pines keep their needles but our tragedy,

our shame – we of the genus deciduous –

is we shed our leaves, hibernate,

then one morning we do not wake.

NEVER

She never did come good,

no permanent move

from shadow into light,

no herb, medication or prayer

liberated her for long,

instead, chlorpromazine's spasms –

'twisties' we called them –

drove our family mad.

She’s dead

but the smoke of madness

drifts from her pyre,

slides under our door

obscures the window,

and hides the moon.

The White Room

My room has white walls.

Manacled with drips and catheters,

at night I conclude

I must be a prisoner

facing my last dawn,

the fatal shot up the cannula.

What have I done?

I’ve had the temerity to get sick

that’s what.

Something’s wrong

with my gut. 

I need ten days of antibiotics

through a vein.

I am captive in a single room.

Hour after hour the walls get to me,

screening silent episodes of my life.

I wait and wait for meals,

meds and obs.

Then there’s the TV –

it could be our family’s first.

“Hello childhood,”

it smiles, sparing me no pain,

“Remember me?”