Once a favorite conversation piece,
now something more like a disease.
A weathervane sings, a wind chime clangs.
It’s December, only a slight silver breeze,
but already I’m imagining the tangled
metal of cars, birds falling from the trees.
My therapist says fear is normal,
that it’s simply a matter of degrees,
the brain has an internal mechanism,
she says, a switch that flicks on and off with ease.
I imagine a kind of silver machine
in my brain, humming like a hive of bees,
fear hopping from synapse to synapse
like some sort of electric, Post-modern flea.
Each day I swallow my grief like a pill,
ignore my therapist’s advice, my wife’s pleas.
I wait for the sky to fall, longing for the days
when wind was only wind, trees only trees.