What Rough Beast | 10 03 20 | David P. Miller

A ninety-year-old poet interjects: he’s never seen it worse than now and this is a hell of a way to go out. The rest of us gathered go silent. Melancholia, dark spleen.

I watched my father’s face crush as my mother struggled to lift a nursing home spoon to her mouth. The spoon with its soup stopped, started, stopped. We both saw her eyelids sink again and again.

Black dog, blue funk. Motion-toward fails, cellar hole where mind was. The heart beats from habit with nothing better to do.

Before we no longer saw her, a recently widowed professor replaced her syllabus with monologues about her husband. Her students had not lost their husbands and had nothing to say to her.

Doldrums equals rue equals desolation equals—

Left on his own, immersed in Willa Cather and presidents’ lives, my father told me sometimes I don’t know what’s worth the effort. He left behind Andrew Jackson’s biography bookmarked on the bed.

Slough of despond, dolor, blue devils, dumps. Words lead to other words. Words veil the “indescribable,” which is another word.

Salesman Victor, office supplies grandfather, bearer of productivity aids. Introduced me to this new thing, “post-its”: pieces of paper to attach, detach, reattach at whim. On his final visit, Victor sat in the manager’s office, remained seated. Unmoving, unspeaking. Staff in the hallway whispered Victor.

Woe, rack. Words surround the verge of a sinkhole. There’s another failed metaphor.