Monday, Monday

Feeling rather vulnerable, alone, dejected,
rootless, haunted, lethargic, restless, and wrecked
this morning.

Maybe I am never going to adjust to this loss--to
these losses--my father, my career. And I say career
because what I did was not just a job to me. For all
the years that I wished I could be home more, be
with my children more, have more time to write,
read, walk, garden, paint, travel, or just be idle
for a day and enjoy it--for all those years of wishing,
I would never wish this on anyone.

What is purpose anyway? What is use? What is time
and wise use of such? This overwhelming sense--this
permeating sense of failure keeps pushing my head
beneath the water. Pushing it down and holding it longer
and longer and rarely letting me come up for a breath
and not giving me time to take a deep one before
it pushes me back down.

There is no greater joy for me--has never been a greater
joy--than that of being a parent. Now, I look forward
to being a part of my grandchild's life, but even with that
joy, my brain won't let go of the this sense of being a great
big nothing. Up and down I go.

Yes, I realize I am depressed, but I have been that way most
of my life. This time it's different. There are such varying
degrees of depression.

*

I also realize that this inability to write is not because
I can't write--No, because I think I could and I think at one
point I did write some decent stuff.

I can't write because I cannot see. I have stopped
seeing. I look hard enough, but I can't see. Sometimes
I look so hard that the world just seems to turn inside
out and then back outside in or it just gets all looped
around--Mobius strip kind of thing. Or it's just upside down
and the sky is the ocean and the ocean is above me
ready to swallow me up. And the tree roots are spreading
their tentacled arms into the ether and their leaves
and delicate tops are balancing on the verdant fields.

Upside down. And inside out. And I cannot see.

*********************************************


First Gestures

Among the first we learn is good-bye,
your tiny wrist between Dad's forefinger
and thumb forced to wave bye-bye to Mom,
whose hand sails brightly behind a windshield.
Then it's done to make us follow:
in a crowded mall, a woman waves, "Bye,
we're leaving," and her son stands firm
sobbing, until at last he runs after her,
among shoppers drifting like sharks
who must drag their great hulks
underwater, even in sleep, or drown.

Living, we cover vast territories;
imagine your life drawn on a map--
a scribble on the town where you grew up,
each bus trip traced between school
and home, or a clean line across the sea
to a place you flew once. Think of the time
and things we accumulate, all the while growing
more conscious of losing and leaving. Aging,
our bodies collect wrinkles and scars
for each place the world would not give
under our weight. Our thoughts get laced
with strange aches, sweet as the final chord
that hangs in a guitar's blond torso.

Think how a particular ridge of hills
from a summer of your childhood grows
in significance, or one hour of light--
late afternoon, say, when thick sun flings
the shadow of Virginia creeper vines
across the wall of a tiny, white room
where a girl makes love for the first time.
Its leaves tremble like small hands
against the screen while she weeps
in the arms of her bewildered lover.
She's too young to see that as we gather
losses, we may also grow in love;
as in passion, the body shudders
and clutches what it must release.

Julia Spicher Kasdorf