What I Know about Melancholy

         In grief the world becomes poor and empty;            melancholy it is the ego itself . . .
                -Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”

Jeff Gundy

Never seen the quarry so high. Still frozen, the ice thick
but cracked, puddled, tempting. I know better
but I love to imagine being reckless.

Another one gone this morning.
Welcome to the world, says one of my demons.
Put on your jacket, it’s cold, says another.

My wife is out of town and I’m free and disoriented,
every hour or two some small thing happens
and I think I’ll tell her over supper.

Multiply that by forever, says the demon,
maybe you’ll start to get it.
I put on my jacket.

Mourning and melancholia?
A broken branch and a sapling leaned together,
impossible to tell them apart until spring.

My boot on the shore ice: a grainy, slippery sound.
If I stepped out on that gray plain
I’d fall down before I could fall through.

I’d soak my pants, bruise my butt in some icy puddle.
What I know about melancholy
is exactly as deep as the ice on the quarry,

cold, hard, and not to be trusted.
What I know about mourning
is under the ice, still liquid, not much warmer,

holding last fall’s leaves and a few small fish
nuzzled against the bottom, not asleep,
not dreaming, neither dead nor awake.

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