Poem for Tuesday

Depression in Winter
By Jane Kenyon

There comes a little space between the south
side of a boulder
and the snow that fills the woods around it.
Sun heats the stone, reveals
a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,
and tufts of needles like red hair,
acorns, a patch of moss, bright green....

I sank with every step up to my knees,
throwing myself forward with a violence
of effort, greedy for unhappiness--
until by accident I found the stone,
with its secret porch of heat and light,
where something small could luxuriate, then
turned back down my path, chastened and calm.

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Another quoted in Poet's Choice in Sunday's The Washington Post Book World. Robert Pinsky writes that Kenyon "acknowledges depression's power but defies it...slogging through snow in 'Depression in Winter,' she sees herself unheroically, caught in the cycle where misery loves not only company but itself, literally graceless."

Not much to say. Slept till 11. Focused for long enough to write two articles, then gave up on the third and was too tired even to write editor an "I can't hold my head up, nobody cares about the latest fan film anyway, this can freakin' wait" note. Mother was a lifesaver taking older son to fencing, as came home at noon and slept for three hours with a cat half on top of him. I managed to get a laundry done (sheets, towels and other things rendered in dire need of washing by illness) but this is because, as I may have mentioned, I slept till 11. Tomorrow I must deal with Hebrew school carpools and may not be nearly so mellow.


Because who doesn't love a little weiner dog?