Seasonal Affective Disorder

Yep, that's something else I suffer from. When the nights grow longer my mood darkens. But it doesn't have to be that way. Every season has its own sweet beauty.

Poetry is a great way to see how beautiful the world can be. So I'm going to cheer myself up by posting another poem from my favourite poet John Ahearn. Over the past few months John has sent me - at my behest - a whole bunch of poems. Most are pretty good. Some are works of pure genius. I've told him (as has the Minx) to get his own blog and post them up for everyone to enjoy but he won't do it. Well, I guess he has his reasons. Anyway, here's one I really like, the elegiac mood gives me hope for the future. Hell, I might even start to look forward to the Autumn.

Seasons

by John Ahearn

How we longed for spring in those days.
Vigilant for any sign of thaw,
we thumbed a dated catalogue of grays,
but the carbide calendar was all we saw,
and we knew the dogged snow was here to stay.

By March we took the weather for the world,
thought the windowpanes had always been
that craquelure through which the frozen pearls
of vain and repetitious sun went thin,
the eyes of languishing Rossetti girls.

So we were always taken by surprise
at the first turning day, almost afraid
to trust the rumors of renewal in the skies,
snow whitening, slinking into shade,
the first distant, migratory cries.

But we couldn’t doubt the orgy of increase
enacted everywhere in the ardent light,
and something in our blood that hated peace
responded to a world arrayed in appetite,
drummed in our winter vessels for release.

And when the warm rains came we danced,
mindless, barefoot, pagan and profane;
washed in the rush and babble of deliverance,
we missed the admonitory strain
nested in the trees’ incessant sibilance.

Within weeks we were praying for an end
to the chain of salamander afternoons,
furnace days we were condemned to spend
imprisoned in refrigerated rooms,
competing for recirculated oxygen.

But then came the first September chill,
a blissful, desiccated shiver of relief,
a harvest note that shook the trees until
we autumn creatures gloried in the brief
catastrophe of blood and chlorophyll.

Though soon enough we grew accustomed to the show,
checked our watches, knuckled back yawns
at the maples’ summer-stock fortissimo,
ambled home to rake our stricken lawns,
longing for the first enchantments of the snow.

Now, doesn't that make you feel good?