I can't explain it

All in all, it's still a meal

I can't explain it, how
the bleakness becomes me.
maybe a shroud falls but
this is always the way I have been.

it's not a costume to pack away,
some exterior dressing.
it's not a mood.
it's not a place I go and 
come back from.
it's not a wait-and-see.

Night is not an exception to day
after all. Yin and yang
are as they are 
because the other is.

Sometimes one drives on a road
and the road is long and straight
like Nebraska, yet
other times its slow and hard,
Sicilian switchbacks,
but, also, it's still a road.

Sometimes one eats supper and
it's brick burnt meatloaf and then
sometimes its oysters 
shucked by the fisherman who 
farmed them at Etang du Thau 
that morning but all in all 
it's still a meal.

Here's the pot full of thin stew,
now, simmering low.
but, now and again,
over gas flames,
it burbles, tossing the lid,
scalding the cook, 
staining the backsplash.
yet, it's still 
stew in a pot
on a stove
chunks of thoughts and love 
waiting or
overflowing.  

Ongoing effort to understand my experience of chronic depression, and also to explain the experience of it to others.