But Sometimes Tuesdays Do

And when they do, what better time to remember that even the sucky days count toward that final number, and so should be enjoyed in whatever way they can... the sun shining when I awoke this morning, work well-done, salmon and glazed carrots for dinner, kisses from my kids.

The People Through the Train Window
by Dick Allen

All we’ll ever know of them are the lights
of their houses in the late evening winter,
and that their lives are intertwined as ours;
as lonely as a Scott Fitzgerald story.
Born to rush out on the earth and die;
how strangely we behave, as if it were not true
that there will be old gravestones up above our bodies,
and our children will be thinking of us sometime.
How else can I say it? We will die
and not come back, not ever, not return
to mystic restaurants and words we’ve spoken softly,
strokings, glances, and confessions, and
the seasons of this lovely planet will take no
notice of our vanishing; my hands
will lie as silently as yours; the wind
above the planet will not touch your eyes,
nor, within a hundred years, one face
of those within the houses with the lighted rooms.
Can we imagine that? All dead, all dead,
all of us dead, who never lived enough.
Good Lord, the carpe diem poets in their graves
were so right that it makes me tremble when
I think of falling into love, and out, and in again,
or listen to Jim Croce in his Creole voice.
Seize the day, oh seize the day, oh seize
your life with every tendon, every thought you have;
the moonlight hits the window, and the stars
have always gone this crazy in their crazy sky.