Saturday, February 4, 2012


“I am Depression - Give me a Drink!” © Mike Absalom January 18th
2012

The dried up geranium in a
terra cotta pot on the windowsill
mutters when I come into the
room late at night.
I suspect it is some kind of
curse.
Perhaps because I have given
it no water for a month.
I didn’t sing to it either.
I am away often, occupying
myself with matters crucial to my sanity.
I do not expect a geranium to
understand this.
This one has many
incarnations to go
before it can even think of
being a rose,
let alone an evolved and sentient plant. I think.
Although I am not too au fait with karmic hierarchies.

As I watch I see it grows a
little.
I am sure that that slight movement
could have been growth!
Although it might have been a
quiet sigh.
It is hard to tell with a plant
so over-cultivated it has never known seed.
This poor dear was raised
from a cutting.
As a shoot it was certainly
underprivileged in the root department!
But it should have got over that
by now.
I notice that it has started
to move like a crab,
sidling sideways towards the
floral curtain. That is not a good sign.

Still I know there is very
little satisfaction around for geraniums these days, particularly not for pink
ones.
And certainly not for brown
dried up wizened ones
that look like a jar full of
fortune teller’s old yarrow stalks.

I bend down and tell it-Forget
the floral curtain! It is an illusion!
And there is no reason for
depression!
It is something that has
soaked in from elsewhere,
perhaps from the old stones
the house is made of,
or maybe it was mixed into
the wet plaster centuries ago
and it has leaked out into
you.
Or from strangers, sidling
up, taking you by osmosis, seeping into you,
rotting you with other
people’s misery. This is not yours. It’s just vrittis!
Stand up and shake it off!
Look through it!
It is mud splattered by
passers by! Or even your own family perhaps!
You only own it by
association, this unease.
I’m sure that made it feel
better.
I fetched a bottle of
schnapps and emptied it into the pot.
That should sort it!
I feel good now!

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