Under Sea Garden

Before anything else, I want to say a profound thank you to everyone who left comments of support or understanding about yesterday. Getting back to you is something I very much intend to do, it's just been a bit tired around here lately, so it might take a few days. But not too long. Promise.



I spent my morning, hiding behind the large flat screen of my computer monitor quietly crying to myself. Tears slid, like tiny snails, down my face and into the corners of my mouth, where I licked them away before I rubbed away their trails with the cuff of my black turtleneck sweater. Crying that hard, for that long will make a person's nose run, which mine did, so I sniffled through the morning as well. When it finally came time for lunch I was a damp puffy mess who needed to get some sun and maybe pull herself together.

( I woke up this morning feeling as though a light bulb in the billboard of my mind had gone out and I had no spare with which to replace it. )


Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look a the sky
and say thank you
we are standing y the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chose we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the back of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on the stairs we are saying thank you

in the backs that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

by W.S. Merwin