Origami Moon
~ Colleen Redman

A snip of folded moon
opens like a swan
in a solo swim
across a paper
blue morning.

My brain chemistry doesn’t care about my privilege, whether actual or attributed. Yes, I am a white, middle-class woman with a college degree, and those things give me advantages. But my brain chemistry doesn’t care about any of those things.

I have a good job, working with reliable colleagues and (mostly) reasonable clients. I have a comfortable home. I eat well, my car runs dependably, and I am able to indulge myself with little luxuries, such as fancy soap and chi-chi tea. But my brain chemistry doesn’t care about any of those things.

My brain chemistry doesn’t care if I have a major project deadline, or a stressed-out client, or a letter from the IRS that needs an answer. My brain chemistry doesn’t care what day it is, or what time it is, or that I’m supposed to get on a plane tomorrow. One day, I’m a functional adult human being who can do everything that needs to be done, and the next day, I’m depressed and have to spend far too much time simply putting on shoes and getting out of the house. Any actual work accomplished is a bonus.

My brain chemistry goes up and down for reasons of its own. Reasons it hasn’t bothered to explain to me. Reasons that I can’t seem to control, although a few things influence it. It fluctuates less when I sleep regularly, when I’m not working 60 hours a week, and when I don’t eat a lot of white sugar. But otherwise? It does what it wants to do. And no amount of positive thinking, being grateful for my advantages, or outright wallowing in my privileges changes what my brain chemistry does.

So, to everyone who tells me I “have no reason” to be depressed, please explain that to my brain chemistry. Because I’ve been telling it that for 54 years, but it hasn’t worked yet.

Serotonin

Any Common Desolation
~ Ellen Bass

can be enough to make you look up
at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
that survived the rains and frost, shot
with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
would rip it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive. The sound
of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant
animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.
The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.
Warm socks. You remember your mother,
her precision a ceremony, as she gathered
the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,
drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath
can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,
the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything
you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves
and, like a needle slipped into your vein—
that sudden rush of the world.

Home
~ Elaine Feinstein

Where is that I wonder?
Is it the book-packed house we plan to sell
with the pale green room above the river,
the shelves of icons, agate, Eilat stone
the Kathe Kollwitz and the Samuel Palmer?

Or my huge childhood house
oak-floored, the rugs of Autumn colours, slabs of coal
in an open heart, high-windowed rooms,
outside, the sunken garden, lavender, herbs
and trees of Victoria plum.

Last night I dreamed of
my dead father, white-faced, papery-skinned
and frailer than he died. I asked him:
– Doesn’t all this belong to us? He shook his head,
bewildered. I was disappointed,

but thought I woke with salt on my lips then
and a hoarse throat, somewhere between
the ocean and the desert, in an immense
Mexico of the spirit, I remembered
with joy and love my other ties of blood.

The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water
~ Mary Oliver

Inside
that mud-hive, that gas-sponge,
that reeking
leaf-yard, that rippling

dream bowl, the leeches’
flecked and swirling
broth of life, as rich
as Babylon,

the fists crack
open and the wands
of the lilies
quicken, they rise

like pale poles
with their wrapped beaks of lace;
one day
they tear the surface,

the next they break open
over the dark water.
And there you are
on the shore,

fitful and thoughtful, trying
to attach them to an idea—
some news of your own life.
But the lilies

are slippery and wild—they are
devoid of meaning, they are
simply doing,
from the deepest

spurs of their being,
what they are impelled to do
every summer.
And so, dear sorrow, are you.

Water Lilies, The Getty Collection