Feral

I put my Sadness on a leash
and walked it
up the block and down.

I trained my Sadness
to heel and sit
and showed it all over town.

"So well bred," people said.
"And behaved!" others raved
about the sadness by my side.

While at home, unallowed
to roam, my Gladness neglected
by slow degrees died.

When I was out one day
it wasted away
and my Sadness the tiny corpse devoured.

Now, at the end of a shrinking leash
my Sadness grows uncontrolled
and I am a constant cower.

Immense as The Night,
my Sadness,
huge as The Rolling Sea:

and I know,
that like my Gladness,
it will soon make a snack of me.

- Richard Cody, '04 -