Flight or Fight
We’re used to the idea of biochemical cycles; homeostatic mechanisms.
For example, the manic-depressive swing
or the insulin-sugar dance.
But I, sometimes, think I feel another cycle;
one that I wonder if it could’ve been
the cause of my mother’s alcoholism
or what Mary Berringer’s doctor calls depression.
What I feel is not depression, as I think of it;
that helpless, who gives a shit, who wants to move feeling
of being utterly down and defeated.
It’s more of a state of hovering, rising anxiety
that comes on so slowly
that you never knew it began.
I suspect the flight-or-fight response is the cause;
the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic
sides of the central nervous system.
I feel my muscles, like my anxiety, as a tight presence
that lingers outside of my consciousness.
A subliminal background against which my
foreground thoughts play.
And, playing all unawares, they assume responsibilities
for my state of general discomfort.
As if cause must be found in the thought
contents of the mind.
But, upon reflection; separating the background from the foreground
I find the only new factor, here,
is this insidious pervading sense of tense anxiety
that’s risen in me, unbidden.
gallagher
27 september 83
Orangetree
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
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