DAYS OF THE WEAK, AFTER
"CALL IT STORMY MONDAY"
(With apologies to T-Bone Walker)
Monday, when we're born, we do not seem to know.
We're no less thoughtless than the thorax-scraping cicada,
which we call song,
nor more useful to our neighbors than the damming beaver,
which we call industry.
The truth of it is we're more ignorant than either.
We yap and toil and lumber about
from Monday through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
as though the days themselves stop us from living
the lives we imagine.
Then Friday comes, when less than the cicada,
we think we fight the war of night.
And Saturday morning, afternoon: we do what we do
with less purpose than the beaver's,
letting habit form our words
tricking ourselves into thinking them deeds
and finding other such ways to pass time,
to mark it like the tail-hammered trunk
or endless echoes of the dark summer sky,
saying Sunday will come, when we use chance
to elevate ourselves from the animal kingdom
when on our knees we wait to be born,
on Monday, which we'll deny when it comes.
But no less than the cicada and the beaver,
we get there anyway. Do we ever get there.
- Philip Vassallo
to Philip
/ to Moongate
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