by Al Ortolani
Cleaning Out the Rock Garden
I’ve cut back on my paroxetine. Probably, that is why the depression returns. Stone by stone, pocket by pocket, it’s not fair for the people around me, wife, children, friends. I should re-up the dosage, medicate balance. I had planned to rise above this on my own. That was my hope. But I’m not able to keep this flood levied behind meditation. I dog paddle, tread with heavy legs, sink like a concrete St. Francis.
garden stone
cracked from the long freeze,
empty snail shells
Then too, if I’m talking physiology, brain chemistry, and the serotonin isn’t present, then hell, it’ll never get better without meds. That’s the downside to turning stones, the upside to finding…
wild onion
raked up with winter leaves
among hyacinth fingers
Across the Wooden Fence
I love mornings when the thunder rumbles and the lightning flashes and the cool breeze lifts the curtains into the bedroom. It is a mantra for me, one that says let go, nothing more is expected, listen and sleep. Rain splatters the deck. The squirrels run the top of the fence. The pear’s white blossoms dip with storm-weight. There is a truth to simplicity. If I begin to list all that I know for certain, it would begin with an observation of where I’m sitting with paper and pen.
blue deepens
in the columbine’s throat
before rain
Visiting Family
We made it a family weekend. I took my mother to the cemetery. My wife did the same with her father. We had both of them wobbling between the stones. Mother kept saying, they’ve changed everything, and she’d motion toward the vastness of the world. But I knew she meant the caretakers, and I wondered if she thought they dug up the dead and moved them around from year to year. But I also knew she meant the storm that had taken out so many of the old shade trees, leaving the spaces between the graves sun-bleached and suburban. My wife’s father, unable to find his mother and father’s graves, leaned on his walker right above them, as right above them as yesterday’s sun in the South Pacific sky, buzzing with suicidal kamikaze—they changed everything too—they stung from above like bees, the whole world falling for a very long time.
sun bleached cemetery
shadows touching
again this spring
Cleaning Out the Rock Garden
I’ve cut back on my paroxetine. Probably, that is why the depression returns. Stone by stone, pocket by pocket, it’s not fair for the people around me, wife, children, friends. I should re-up the dosage, medicate balance. I had planned to rise above this on my own. That was my hope. But I’m not able to keep this flood levied behind meditation. I dog paddle, tread with heavy legs, sink like a concrete St. Francis.
garden stone
cracked from the long freeze,
empty snail shells
Then too, if I’m talking physiology, brain chemistry, and the serotonin isn’t present, then hell, it’ll never get better without meds. That’s the downside to turning stones, the upside to finding…
wild onion
raked up with winter leaves
among hyacinth fingers
Across the Wooden Fence
I love mornings when the thunder rumbles and the lightning flashes and the cool breeze lifts the curtains into the bedroom. It is a mantra for me, one that says let go, nothing more is expected, listen and sleep. Rain splatters the deck. The squirrels run the top of the fence. The pear’s white blossoms dip with storm-weight. There is a truth to simplicity. If I begin to list all that I know for certain, it would begin with an observation of where I’m sitting with paper and pen.
blue deepens
in the columbine’s throat
before rain
Visiting Family
We made it a family weekend. I took my mother to the cemetery. My wife did the same with her father. We had both of them wobbling between the stones. Mother kept saying, they’ve changed everything, and she’d motion toward the vastness of the world. But I knew she meant the caretakers, and I wondered if she thought they dug up the dead and moved them around from year to year. But I also knew she meant the storm that had taken out so many of the old shade trees, leaving the spaces between the graves sun-bleached and suburban. My wife’s father, unable to find his mother and father’s graves, leaned on his walker right above them, as right above them as yesterday’s sun in the South Pacific sky, buzzing with suicidal kamikaze—they changed everything too—they stung from above like bees, the whole world falling for a very long time.
sun bleached cemetery
shadows touching
again this spring
RSS Feed
