ABYSS



Non-fearing
That has been,
is generally,
was always who I
have been.

Until January in my 53rd year
when divorce, death and cancer
combined with corporate americas re-organization
and hormone pharmacology to
alter such fear-less-ness.

Looking into the abyss,
abyss of the mind, a dark and
selfless place. As if
walking on a flat desert plane,
dry land scrub plants poke up from the
levelness of tanned expanse;

I walk toward that place in me where such
adobe ends in abrupt edge
beyond which there is nothing;
a blue black darkness in all directions outward
small whiffs of mist act only to accentuate
this deep space of emptiness;

And as it must be, one can only
pass beyond by passing through,
stepping off the dirt's edge into black,
an unknown of everything.

And so, sitting in an office, staring in one's head,
sweet sweat pouring from this frightened boy, swirling
inwardly, halted beyond recognition...

This is what one describes so inadequately as
'anxiety'; this darkness of soul,
a place from which only a sense of God can reach.
a place in which death is a warm blanket comfort.

It is that place i search to describe,
a place I have never until now visited
and from which Prozac delivered me
unabashedly.

gf march 1998