“There is Safety in Numbness.” © Mike Absalom
2011


You are not depressed.
Perhaps you wander like a
tourist
through the Valley of the
Shadow of Death,
but fearing no evil,
for really,
apart from your pitch black
gloom,
there is no evil in this
place.




This is an invention of old
men who
having looked through their
own keyholes with sticky eyes
have been affronted
by the goings on.

You have walked through the
Valley of the Shadow of Death,
and are indeed walking there
now,
amazed by the green ferns that
grow from cracks
in the smooth walls of this
igneous Valley.
They are fed from above by
fallen rain
and they smell of gold leaf.
They are fed too by water drawn
from below,
which however smells of
sulphur.

They beckon, for they are the
lost angels which guide you,
even though they are lost
too.
At least they are green.
And like you,
they feel nothing.
There is safety in Numbness.