Listening to The Mountain Goats while on public transport
I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.
& I think maybe things will never be truly okay, but I will. The patch of sunlight that falls on the bedroom floor might just be enough to keep the storm at bay. The way my cat greets me when I come home plants my feet firmly on the ground. & isn’t it something how I’m always writing about sunlight, & isn’t it something how I’m always writing about hope. I am not a very interesting man, most of the time I lay in bed & conjure up a better future than the one written on the walls. About once a week the world smiles at me so wide I can’t bear to look at it– suddenly there is so much light everywhere I fear I will go blind. Maybe it’s the way a stranger says excuse me while slipping by a crowd, the magpie hopping along next to the train tracks, the little bats fluttering around at sundown. I don’t know what it is but the sudden realization that I am alive & the earth is often kind. Isn’t that marvelous? How strange it is to open your eyes to another fresh morning & knowing you can start over at any point, that you’re technically not lost if you keep moving. & perhaps all those other poets had a point when they said time spent with the world is never wasted. Can you feel how the grass grows between your fingers? I promise to leave this life as broken as a ceramic teapot. I promise to hold every shattered piece of sky in my hands until I bleed. I will walk down every one of the earth’s scars & find the place where the ground begins to heal. I will ask God for more time, even when I’m on my knees praying for an ending. There won’t be space to bury everything I’m gonna carry with me.
Praise the mutilated world. Praise the gentle light that strays & vanishes– & returns.
god this is so beautiful!! i love the ending especially, the last two sentences are such a good way to end it, with a final prayer…amazing work!!