For the third Sunday of July, this month’s poetry post is a reflection on depression, by zoomorphizing it in the form a popular metaphor for it, the black dog.

The Black Dog

A poem now I compose this time
on that darkest haze, a draining of color
from my view of the world, the vigor-killer
that’s called depression. It’s a constant pet
that I can’t be rid of, though it can be leashed,
and sometimes it sleeps. He said it best,
that war leader, Sir Winston Churchill,
when naming it thus a nasty Black Dog.
The Dog has a multitude of dreary forms.
In earlier times, this odd temperament
was mostly called melancholy,
and thought to be an imbalance of humors,
caused by black bile being in excess.
About such bile, I barely know,
but on the saddest of days, it seems to involve
another fluid that’s known to be black:
it’s like moving through a molasses sea.
I feel it also in other forms:
like limbs waylaid with leaden weights
(the hound on my back, holding tightly),
or an urge to idleness for endless time
(like a dog in summer, drooping in the heat).
At times I’m trapped in the tomb of my head,
with thoughts racing and thudding around.
It’s a slowing down of myself to the world,
which is racing by, with the relentless ticking
of the “real-time clock” as a ruthless oppressor,
while I’m standing still and stuck in a rut.
“Pause” I would press on the passage of time,
and sit for hours, or sit for days,
relieved of burdens till the listlessness passed.
Myself I drive to soar to the heights,
too hard at times, perhaps I do.
Some tools I try to retain my center:
galdor and herbs to gladden the Dog
—when it’s growling and weighing me down—
and meditation to steer my mind from within.
Or alchemical work to alter my state,
as black bile and blood would balance together:
melancholia—’tis cold and dry—
to mix with the sanguine’s warmth and moisture.
But for this chimerical Dog, I must constantly
shift my methods; a sure balance
is only found in a chaotic manner.
Sometimes I need to set it loose,
allowing it freedom and letting it run
till it gets tired and takes a nap.
What truly works? I wish I knew.
In all the methods, my aim must be
to form a friendship with this fearsome Dog
—since, after all, it’s always present—
and train it well for trust and weal
with collar, leash, and quality biscuits.
For it actually is, in this incarnation,
a part of me, and repudiating it
would work as well as willingly repressing
my shadow self. To shine from my center,
my eternal task is Transmutation,
and no exception this certainly is.
Hail the Black Dog. Who’s a good boy?

Copyright © 2023 Eirik Westcoat

Hwæt! This poem first appeared on my Patreon in October 2022. If you’d like to see great poems like this one much earlier than the rest of the public—plus lots more exclusive material that will never appear on this blog—just subscribe to my Patreon site.