Winter's End

            

I miss the comfort in being sad

Kurt Cobain

I          

Cars go by,

spray from tires coursing the grey streets

Red tail-lights bleeding,

yellow line, stop sign

An ordered world

of shopping malls and parking stalls

and coffee in the afternoon

I shuffle in to settle all accounts of sadness

I have with me a coiled notebook and pen,

and some place that is a mystery to me,

the creative vaults of craft

Perhaps the sun will show itself

and I will sit outside and watch the blackbirds

strut before their shadows

           

I live in the deep pools of winter, a man groping in the well of sadness where all is up and obtainable, nothing below to fall into, no more steel-jawed traps for I have sprung them all. I say live because it is the aliveness of sadness, the energy of despair that reaches with an outstretched hand. It is the glimpsing of recovery that makes sadness bearable. Perhaps I will rise and touch the sky on this day, or the next and so on.

II

Happiness is risky,

it can be lost, a glad heart stabbed and smashed

To have it is to lose it, and we believe

it will never come our way again

That falling away from light

and the coming dark is too much

Better to stay prostrate upon the couch of sadness

Then there is hope, glimmers of light that beckon,

tantalize and tease

I have learned that sadness

is the drawing in of our lives,

all the worn and tattered parts of ourselves

I say stay there for a while and heal the old bones

bashed and bruised from falling

Stay in the realm of wounds. Lick them well

Hold them up to the sun,

let it burn away the impurities of the day

Wait for meaning to arrive

through the fuse of your pen

Put it all down, every tear that bears some truth,

some relevance of your life. Your story so far

I waste every day, my eyes closed to the sun like a blind man. Some light seen through my thin lids, a world that I shun, partitioned like a rat in search of cheese at some glorious end. Death has possibilities. I would know at least what John Denver knows. Will I have another chance to reclaim the lost and empty memories that could have been mine? I waste every day. Darkness against my skin, the velvet feel of it behind my eyes. And something coming in the distance.

III

And yet there are fleeting moments

when all is mine, no excuses or regrets

A blank canvass with my name etched at the bottom

To trust in the universe, my own evolution

Individuation, Jung called it

I have this growing trust

that everything is happening for my greater good,

that it is somehow right

and I cannot change the course of it

Some higher power that is nameless

Still this vacillation between hope and hopelessness

is the hardest thing of all. How long will it last?

And when this roller coaster ride ends,

where will I be, falling belly-sick and screaming,

or rising with my hands folded

over my heart to greet a new world?

I was once told that I was too sentimental and bowed my head as if I wronged the world with such notions. But now I see that it is a part of me, strings that hold me together, one of many strings of varying resonance and texture. My very own. Pluck them and you will hear my music