Black Dogs Redux Poem by Ken Craft

The blue sad light is on again.
Maybe it's the weather. Or the season.
Or the relentless grind of the quotidian.
Maybe it's the "Is that all there is? " of the holidays,
where boxing ornaments, burning dried holly, and recycling
wrapping paper feels like picking up
after the dogs. The black dogs. Who heel all too well.
Orion has his astral-eyed pooch,
I have my black-furred dogs, loyal as shadow.

Walking backwards, man's best friend is god, who has a hand
in this. That's the sensation: the Great One's hand applies
a slight pressure to my head, weighing me down.
The motivation to read? Nothing seems good anymore.
To write? I have nothing to say
and, damn Ecclesiastes anyway, it's all been said.
Everything is vanity, all right, a striving after wind.
And like the Greek chorus, there's this 33-degree rain
at 5 in the morning. Not the silent, deflected sound of snow,
but that direct, cold ping running down the gutters of my spirit.

I adjust the sad light so the angle is better,
file rays in the blue facets of my eyes,
reshuffle them, come up with a deeper blue: slow, indigo
in scope. I can always sleep, but sleep leaves ash dreams.
I know exercise is an antidote, but I must first scale
the architecture of my own apathy. All those slivers under the fingernails! It's easier to make love to sweets that never judge, lick the ice cream, scoop of here in a cone of now.

Didn't Ben Franklin say we should be well-rounded, after all?
He said a lot. And never once owned a dog.
Ben just donned beaver caps
and attracted lovely French ladies, who earlied-to-bed
when he was early to rise. Gay Parisian moths to a flame burning with New World life, they were, giggling in French, obsessed by their own dogged desires.

OK, so the thought of it gives a little lift. But just a little.
I'm too depressed for anything drastic.