It has been a long time since I felt like indulging in poetry – over six months. During that time, my wife Joan has died, and I have gone through some of many stages of grieving.. 

            “How are you doing these days?” people ask. 

            “Just fine,” I reply. And usually I mean it. But sometimes I’m lying. 

            The origins of this poem, I should acknowledge, come from Alex Comfort‘s Atoll in the Mind. He contrasted the placid surface of a lagoon and a mind with the unseen predators lurking in the shadows below consciousness. 

Anger

Daisies lupines and long green grass 
wave and waive and weave the meadows 
bright brush strokes splashed against 
the sky. Savory sage bristles higher 
on the drier slopes. Roots reach down 
into the depths of dark. A sunless 
river runs through it, silent water 
seeping through millennia of limestone, its  
irresistible force dissolving immoveable rock, 
building pressure underfoot, until a superficial word 
trips over its good wishes and artesian
 spout spews forth, bitter as brine, 
cold as the grave it came from.  

Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. 

Deeper still but never still, magma
 roils white-hot, beneath consciousness, 
crushed down, compressed, repressed 
by the overburden of convention and 
stiff upper lip, waiting only for a crack 
in the surface veneer to split along an abyss 
to vent a volcano that sears good wishes
 into blackened charcoal. 

Sorry. Sometimes I’m below myself. 

-- Jim Taylor, August 2020