Daydreaming of Life Without Lithium
I’ll find my way to the word-of-mouth healer,
Take her herbs and ayurvedic questionnaires
She’ll say that my dosha is Pitta. Unbalanced Fire.
It’s why I love the thrill of jumping off cliffs
into flooded quarries, holding level under
deep green, staring down at stolen cars.
I’ll change my address, exile myself to wilderness,
a mountain cottage where I’ll rake the moss-covered roof,
scrape mildew from walls, remove tobacco smell with sage.
I’ll self-medicate with passionflower and lavender.
Keep hemlock’s temptation buried in a mason jar.
Only hear gunshots from hunters in a ravine.
There will be daily walks on an abandoned trestle
spraying graffiti on stones, lighting campfires with kerosene.
At night, read the gospel of Paul. Jung’s book of dreams.
I’ll start a poem on the bedroom ceiling:
I am feral moonlight on a bed of ferns weighted with rain.
I am wind, smoldering coals and blowing ash.
As if Antidepressants Pollinated the Late August Air
As if antidepressants pollinated
the late August air
everyone who passed that day
smiled and waved.
The dog twitched and grinned
as she slept.
A jet unseen
plumed the sky.
I sliced tomatoes
into little wagon wheels,
spread fresh chopped red basil
over them
like the first fall leaves.
In the yard, on the lone pine
that survived
last April’s storm,
the pileated woodpecker
I’d come to love
with his red tuft
of hair and painted clown face
typed out these words:
Happy? Happy now?
William Varner’s poems have appeared in Boston Review, Cimarron Review, The Cincinnati Review, Green Mountains Review, The Greensboro Review, Harpur Palate, Poet Lore, Smartish Pace, Vallum, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Leaving Erebus, was the selection for the Keystone Poetry Series (Seven Kitchens) for 2018.