emotionally on point

my hyperactive psyche

my psyche has ADD:

my emotional attention always alert

as if to beware a predator—

something wrong that stalks me,

I do not find it easy

to relax into a mental stupor,

to be like a couch potato,

mesmerized into passivity,

my psyche is often on point,

alert to threats:

a snapped twig might mean a person,

a twinge in my body might mean a fatal glitch,

death always but an absence of a breath away,

in the night my subconscious stays on point,

I resurrect old wounds and hurt again

for what I did, for what I didn’t do,

I’m on point with concern 

for my wife, my children, my grandchildren,

my students, my friends, my country,

just as ADD may have saved the tribe on the savannah,

so I hope my ease into anxiousness

helps me live each moment fully.

by Henry H. Walker

April 6, ’17