No Need to Panic

Sometimes meaning slips away
without prior arrangement and
I am left exposed once again.

The tattered clothes of habit
refuse to cover the nakedness
of my inner darker confusions.

Left alone to my own devices,
without access to the familiar
landscape of routine, my constructed

world reveals itself insubstantial.
I want to run for the hills or dash
for the door or cry for help—

but the terrain is jumbled
and my voice has already fled.
I am not very brave. I am prone

to faint at the sight of syringes
and blood. I have very little tolerance
for pain and always ask for extra Novocain

at the dentist’s office. But I’ve been
here before and I remember a thing
or two. So I lay low and give up hope

of anything else. Tossed and swirled by
my fears and sure that no good will ever re-emerge,
I go along for the ride as best I can. Only this.

Only this now. Maybe breathing is
the only true work we can ever know.
Maybe there is no need to panic.