‘Mood disorder’ the psychiatrist wrote
But look at nature with her moods labile,
No one tells her how she should feel.
When half of my mind is tilted away from the sun,
An ego alien ice seizes control.
I have all the appearance of a frozen lake,
Lalique-like,
As though someone stole
The purest soul
And set it in glass.

Thoughts will not thaw,
Little can grow
And like leaves imprisoned in winter’s strass
I cannot escape the white coats of snow.

Then all of a sudden from the safety of the hibernacle
I am roused by the radiance of those yellow flowers,
Chartreuse bullets that fire at will,
The ammunition of the daffodil.
Yet still I am vulnerable like the neck of a lamb,
My brain as fragile as the cherry blossom cloud
That weds me to a kind of happiness
Though I have barely left the shroud.

Soon the daffodil dies but the light remains,
No longer can I bask in her artificial rays.
Instead I look to the hands of honeysuckle,
How in their robes of Buddhist orange
They faithfully accept the illumination above
And I wonder if I too am worthy of such love.

But before I reach an answer my true colours arrive
And I learn that to fall is really to rise,
That surrounded by death I can still feel alive.

‘Mood disorder’ the psychiatrist wrote
But look at nature with her moods labile,
Though she cycles and changes
She is ever beautiful, ever worthwhile.