Depression Poem #13: "Keep the Faith"

Keep the Faith

You say two friends were murdered
but it's a nice day
and there must be some middle ground
between the abandoned mineshaft
and the Holstein sky.

Ants kill ants as easily as popping sodas.
Some father fish swallow their fry,
others rock them gently inside their jaws.
Sometimes an ox is gored
by another ox and dies.

Sometimes a country sends its young
to float like dynamited carp
in distant rice paddies.
If mercy were based on evidence
I'd shoot you.


(published in Gravity)

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Again, today's poem features that cynical anger that presages a recovery from depression, an anger still generalized but likely to soon fix on actual people and situations or a more distant re-examination of the self.

The only difficulty some may have with this poem is the use of "Holstein" as an adjective, which refers to the patchy design on the hide of that breed of cow, turning the sky into a sort of black-and-white montage.

--CE