Assignment: Describe Depression.

By Any Name
— for Robin Williams, August 11, 2014.

Dick Cavett described it best.
He said at its
worst, if there was a cure for it on your bedside table
and you simply had to reach out and take it,
it would require a

strength you did not have.
Since time began
Others afflicted have weighed in.
To Sylvia Plath it felt like a
bell jar.
Black dogs
is popular but not mean enough,
The dogs would have to be rabid, loose,

starved.
Slough of despond
from a Welsh pundit sounds almost like
a poetic interlude.
The mean reds
was Billie Holiday’s but sorry, Lady Day, too

pretty.
Country singers tell us time and again about
their plain old blues.
From William Styron came
Darkness Visible.
And he was one who
knew.

For me
It’s a thief,
the worst kind.
Cavalierly stealing my wit, my smile,
my every trace of ease.
It’s wilier than me, and
stronger,
without the slightest inclination
of giving up or
looking back.