Required Course

author’s note:

Another poem previously posted and recently revised.

During my lackluster high school football career, I heard only one half-time pep talk.  It really gave us a charge--for about five minutes.

Perhaps the coach should have told us...

...sometimes you just have to take a lickin’ while doing the best you can.


NAKED SECRET

I am not afraid
of depression
of this heavy eagle--
this shadow angel
with its blue flame eyes burning
in the dark mist.

I won’t run--
where would I go?
No, not there--
not anymore.

Now I bask under
a gray sky--
defiantly.  I am wet
in the water, feeling
the tug of war
of waves rocking; I’m washing
internal organs
so that they may process
all the dust I ingest,
so that they may be used
by countless others.

I compliment myself
on being such a complex being.
So monstrous.  So like igneous rock.  In contrast
to my lamb-like appearance.

I am the storm mountain.
I am the stone face the storm
cracks, erases--but who needs
a stone face?

I never knew I would be so strong.
I never knew I would have to be.

This depression crept in like smoke
to whisper a naked secret to me--
to tell me I can be
even stronger--to intimate

that I will be required.

© 2008, Michael R. Patton
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