SOMETIMES Poetry Becomes Real . . .

I've been trying to get out of the habit of commenting on my work - somehow explaining it in advance.  The work should speak for itself, yes?  But I do want to say that this poem was inspired by a real devil of a week, and a real late afternoon nap where I dreamed like I had not in well over a week. In that magical dreamworld, two dear friends came to me . . . 

Dream Therapy

by Judith Cullen

© 2019

Dragging the week behind,

doubt, fear, sorrow, and pain

thudding at each labored stair,

an accumulation of fighting

weighting every step, till I drop.

Subsiding into dreams, expecting

more monotone wanderings -

tears unexplained, unshed and

more steps, more labors till

somehow the fog would clear.

FIRST POEM OF THE NEW YEAR: "Welcome to the Light"

Come to the Light

by Judith Cullen

©2019            

"Come to the light," they implored.

While I, blackened fog, lurked uncertain,

wrapped in blankets of complacencies,

familiarities, and chilling sufficiency leading

to the same inexorable cycling.

Reaching out from beneath the comforter

hands touch mine, "Come to the light,"

they repeat in chorus, "We miss you, join us."

They cannot pull me bodily from my gloom,

the impulse must be my own.

NEW ESSAY: "You Are Not Alone"

You Are Not Alone

By Judith Cullen

© 2014

I went to a gathering of folks from my High School recently.  It was not a formal reunion, but simply an informal gathering at a local brewery-eatery.  There were people from several classes there, spanning the years around 1980.  I had expected some of the “old scripts” of behavior to kick in, as so often they do in such situations.  That was not the case.  Perhaps the reality of all of us being over 50 has given us a wholly different perspective.  We have lived a lot in over thirty years – each and every one of us.

Early on, a lovely woman from the year after mine obliquely referred to her struggles with depression.  It was probably the only moment in the evening that I faltered, and felt that same old awkwardness that I felt so often in High School.  I remember this woman as a bright, self-assured young lady. Depression was the last thing I would have expected to creep into her life.