No Way to Apprehend It

*

When I am less anxious things seem so fine. It's not that things seem bad when I get like this, because no matter how bad I feel I know that things go on the way they do and they are good, but when I feel this way I got no way to apprehend what's good.

I got no way to apprehend it.


*


If I was to say. If I was to take you by the hand.
As if you'd understand then. As if I would.
The incantations. The overpass and the the bridges.
It is dark and growing darker.

It is dark and growing more so.


*

I am a poor substitute for what is needed.
I wander about, holding out a bowl, scribbling some prayer,
but I am not what's
needed in the end.

The good intentions I got, they won't get you a dime's worth
of the god's elixers.



*

I could lift a stone. I could do it again
and again. Maybe not such a heavy stone as this one,
but perhaps a smaller one.

Perhaps this one here.


Perhaps not.


*

it is a constant surprise to me that I am so easily knocked for a loop.
And that is a poor excuse. I know that I am nothing like crazy.


Right.


I have tied my own hands to the oars and I will see that I work
the oars until we reach what shores are ours to discover.



It's just that I'll complain.




*