My First Lithium.

MY FIRST LITHIUM

   I was twenty-one, and high and mighty.
   I stomped to my psychiatrist, angry.

   I took a seat, felt better, turned mellow.
   I went in, happy as a child in snow.

   Then I asked him for an arm wrestle,
   got turned down. I began to whistle

   and asked the man where he went to school
   as if it mattered, where there were rules

   and always someone aberrant to break them.
   I had become much more interesting again.

   I sang happy songs to a portrait, a windowsill.
   He turfed me out, gave me water and a bitter pill

   to swallow, like the diagnosis, a habit I had to keep.
   Something I never had before, but needed, like sleep.