A good day or not?

My legs are like tree trunks as I stumble from bed.

Then, past the window I see the pure, raw innocence of day,

a distant crow calls; a cloud moves from north to south,

slowly, like a vaporous language of motion.

Not a good day for suicide.

All mornings are not the same.  Often they are dark,

worse than night because they are not night,

worse than full day because they are not yet day,

and those mornings are conducive…..they might be good days for suicide?

But then one oversleeps, or awakes with a special thought

of something bright to accomplish, a shine to place

on the most meager enterprise , a duty that seems like moira – destiny,

and as black and sinister, as death-compelling as those mornings seem,

they too are still not good days for suicide.

[Then there is the slow crawling emergence of night

when night is feared simply because it is night

and in those nights the fear-filled cups of sleep are quaffed

and though one fears the onslaught of a devil’s dream

something strange occurs, the sky opens up and stars appear,

and one begins to think of distant aliens smiling at our folly,

and that is sufficient to close one’s eyes in peace.

and not think on mornings.]

But afternoons in summer, with cicadas moaning in the oaks

and each moment dripping with a slowness of time,

and even the most friendly face is sweated with secret wrath,

and the clocks seem to stop when the sun is most high,

those are the times that might portend 

it could possibly be a good day for suicide.

Each day is burdened as they all are with the dark rhythms

of defeat and anger, with something ill measured in each eye,

with the inexorable tick of change rubbing one raw ,

with anticipation of the next moment that is known in advance,

with remembrances that are like old angry angels,

each day comes anew,

and the newness alone is sufficient to tell that that day

is probably not a good one for suicide.

Thus, I am fooled by what I believe newness means

in its fullest sense – the newness of old sunlight,

the young age of a pulsing ocean, new with each wave,

the possibilities of a spark in another’s eye

that was never there, but wished for.

And though I am fooled,

I am not foolish, and I see that this day too is not yet

a good day for suicide.