WISTFUL MELANCHOLY, UNFOCUSED HELL

WISTFUL MELANCHOLY, UNFOCUSED HELL

Wistful melancholy, unfocused hell. When

you get here, this hour upon you, this station

of ruinous freedom you longed for and attained,

extreme evanescence without the body for restraint,

nebular without any stars to show for it,

long past the beginning and too far to finish,

nothing to give up and even less to hang on to.

Everything you cherished and probably still do

enough to hurt you, keep suckering you back

into life as if you were being taught to walk

all over again by reaching out a few steps

further and further and further for what you want,

leaves you feeling undernourished, knowing

there’s no food for it you can eat with the same relish

you once tore at the flesh of an apricot

like the moon low on the horizon with your teeth.

The savage act of a mysterious, elusive life

that couldn’t be trivialized by an explanation

of its vital signs pulsing underground

as it lost interest in singing the dead up

from the grave when grief, even elegantly articulated,

fruitively matured into understanding how

it demeaned them by believing they weren’t

happy where they were, a windfall at the roots of it all.

Life shrugs. Things fall off your shoulder

like an avalanche of chips and bluebirds, angels

and demons who always had the better argument,

rank, identity, the world, a snowflake, the hair

of a woman you once loved so passionately

even then, when the dragon’s roar was fire,

you knew it would end with you feeling this way

one night like the long shadow of a bliss

that wouldn’t be bliss if it were to last

more like a watershed than a shotglass.

Still fall. Black walnuts rotting on the sidewalks

like bubbles of soot. The monarchs don’t sip

from the milkweed pods anymore, and that

stubborn little flower, chicory, just won’t give up,

however many times they bush hog the highway.

Stems detached from their leaves like

the slender bones of birds all over the sidewalk

as if they were talking to each other in an alphabet

no one’s deciphered yet. Violet asters against

the burning wings of Magian sumac when

the fire-god comes looking for fire in a shrine

devoted to its ashes. The autumn’s a sad furnace.

And me? Maybe it’s because my hair’s turned white

and the crow’s no longer dyed by shadows of moonlight,

I feel like a landscape smothered under the white noise

of wet snow. Not quite death but as close as you can go.

PATRICK WHITE