Sobriety (for A.K.Grant)

 
Mornings like that, the light
oscillates almost, with webs
of sadness (spiderwork pearls
in the sharp gorse) and I wonder
at who I might have been.

Clinically it's probably mild
depression, or chronic lifelong
melacholia, but shit, what do
I know? Life is life and
you pay the price: desire.

I know hundreds of people,
virtual nobodies someone
loves: somehow, somewhere
they felt it too, something
transparent, glory's edge.

But now it is a new evening
and I forget all that: you're
cut by another knockback
so go looking for peace in
a stranger's fat US novel.

I'll go to a meeting, confess
my obsessions in public, feel
this belonging to a bunch
of failures who found a bedrock
way back in. And then come home,

read more Gogol. Always a brand
new inn for the traveller: sun comes
up on the big bad world, creation
swarms in the wet green grass
and today, I will not take a drink.

© 2001 Trout &
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman