Selected Poetry by Wesley Appel

Photo Source: Pixabay

Dew Drop

Dew Drop

Rolling down a rose petal.

Down the stem it goes,

Passing thorn after thorn—

Skipping over leaves like groping hands.

Touchdown!

Drip drop, Dew Drop touches down.

Amongst the fertile plains of earth

Dew Drop settles in the growing mire.

Other drops congress

Convoking and dropping

From the rosy, golden, majestic heavenly reaches

That the morning

bequeathed upon them.

Worms crawl and work

Helping the Dew Drop to carry out its noble task,

Because greatness rests on the back of minutia

And life is smaller than that.

Have you looked?

Watch the drops dance and sing

Lapping in the moonlight’s love

As mama leaves and papa feeds their verdant homes

When morning comes.

Crawling lower beneath the earth

With rollie-polies and

blind things slither

Grabbing and pulling unawares of the light above

And the fire below.

But the Dew Drop continues to dig.

A miner it could be—an excavator!

While all the other drops have met their timely ends,

Fortunately to return

to their fated havens,

This one continues its burrow.

Past a hundred years it sees,

Then a thousand,

Then a million,

Forever descending into the subterranean heaven

Leaving comfort,

Trickling into uncertain sediment.

Trailing past things once alive in dirt which once sprouted life,

Moving to return life

where life once was,

And the Dew Drop falls further into oblivion.

Missing the moonlight, missing the sunlight

It finds a new home because there is only one way to go—

Always down,

Careening forever.

You should’ve looked

when you had the chance.

Dew drops are fleeting—

Fledgling little bubbles of concentration

Focused on the only goal

they ever knew.

Dew Drop finds no grass below.

Dew Drop finds only mystery and sightless wonder

And it continues to plunge

Towards the core.

Dew Drop adjusts.

As it pursues, it spreads itself

Leaving pieces behind

for the earth to use,

Giving back to what was given to it.

The earth uses Dew Drop to make life,

Sending love and warmth up to the roots of the rose,

The one and its brothers and sisters

That housed Dew Drop and supplied it for its journey.

Dew Drop loses drip by drop

Becoming smaller,

Becoming so much larger,

And it concentrates,

Like a drill,

Falling,

Opening.

Open up, world!

Open the cave,

May Dew Drop fall into that rushing river underneath the earth—

A river that giants once drank from.

Let him become the biggest Dew Drop,

The world has never seen one so big.

It is far too late to see how great Dew Drop truly is.

Because minutia is the building block of greatness

And we must continue to dig to find how small we are.

Filth

Alone

In my filth locked away

Hoping to see the red sun

Shining down on my face

Dark and hard is the room

I am accustomed to. Filth

Builds and I am trapped

A light shines from the dark

A doorway I see sun shining

A step through it is light

A new air a new sound

Alone

Others look with fear. Filth

Is still covering my scaled skin

That I have not seen

In the reflective pane I see

I am the monster. Filth

Remains and I am lost

A scream in the distance

A tear in the air breeds the dark

A step through it is me

A me which stands yonder

Alone

Others run in the rain. Filth

Starts to run down the scaled skin

I see me

In the red sun I see

I am no monster. Filth

leaves and I am found

Together

Wesley Appel is a Masters candidate studying clinical psychology at Teachers College of Columbia University. His fascination with the mysteries of the unconscious and the manifestations of behavior in waking life infer his writing, whether it pertains to human connection or unresolved trauma. His hope is that people will find solace in knowing that they are not alone in the emotional and psychic challenges they face and that his writing will create a platform to open discourse pertaining to mental health.