Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh

From time to time, many of us experience a sense of malaise, an indefinite feeling of gloom, without being able to put our finger on any particular problem. It’s a general suspicion that the world isn’t right, and that our lives aren’t right, either: that there’s something indefinably rotten at the core of everything, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

At times, this malaise can seem to surround us. The common wisdom at the moment is that politicians will always lie, that wars will be unjust and without end, and, in short, that things will always get worse. In the modern world, every one of the many screens we engage with can become a portal to news media-induced despair.

Yes, the general gloom can become so all-​enveloping that the idea of adopting a different outlook seems laughable. But if you can remind yourself that the world may not be as bad as it seems, then escape is possible.

Cling to that hope. Drag yourself to the surface. Sometimes, it will make you feel better.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

Write Your Medicine Prompt:

To start, choose an image that catches your attention, evokes a rumbling of emotion. You may know why, maybe not. Sometimes it is writing itself that will help you see why that image resonates.

It can be an image in your imagination, a pic from your cell phone, or a random picture from a magazine.

The idea is to explore, in poetry, how this image makes you feel. Often the image that comes to mind or captures your attention is speaking to you, represents a part of you that wants to be expressed. In this context, writing is the deepest form of listening. 

Here is my image:

Here is my poem:

Like the wave
A memory of a dream
Swimming the depths
Surrounded with whales
I am afraid
I feel free

What is your image and poem?