My So-Called Mid-Life Crisis

I am grateful to life for its fleeting memories of affection.
I am grateful to the ocean for its haunting, forever aimless stretch.
I am grateful to its waves and it depths and its creatures and its colors and its fanciful fantasies that it carries on its crests, fantasies of floating effortlessly to the shores of a distant island, uninhabited, that I might blanket myself with its sun and sand and green dark sylvan shade.
Grateful to the waterfall that pounds its life persistently into the stone and ash of eons, as if fighting back.
Grateful to Ireland for being a land of water, of green vast rolling plains with veins of liquid crystal coursing.
My veins course only with dirt. Dirt comes from me and it spills as mud from my wet tongue when I speak to no one and anyone.
To regret every word you speak is a burden.
I am a sensitive pile of brush and dirt that the slightest display of affection ignites.
And I am ashamed.
Ashamed to be so grateful.
I am grateful for every smile, every joke, every drink of water, every cloud and every sunray, every hand and finger and every breath breathed upon or near me. Grateful for it all.
"If it rained an ocean, I'd drink it dry and lay me down dissatisfied."
I'm ashamed to be so grateful.
To the point that all I am grateful for I am also bitter towards.

I don't think I should exist. This type of thing should not exist.

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"Down at the bottom of that dirty old river,
down where the reeds and the catfish play,
there lies a dream as soft as the water,
there lies a bluebird that's flown away.

To meet is like springtime and to love's like the summer.
Her brown eyes shone for nobody but me.
In autumn forever, the fool come a-fallin',
and the rain turned to freezin' inside of me.

I'll kindle my fires with the words I can't send you
and the roads I can't follow and the songs I can't sing.
I'll wander alone on the sleigh bells of winter
with the stars for a diamond and the world for a ring.

All you young ladies who dream of tomorrow,
while you're listenin' these words will I say:
Cling to today with its joy and its sorrow,
you'll need all your memories when youth melts away.

The angel of springtime, he rides down the south wind.
The angel of summer, he does just the same.
The angel of autumn, she's blue and she's golden.
The angel of winter won't remember your name.

Down at the bottom of that dirty old river,

down where the reeds and the catfish play,

there lies a dream as soft as the water,

there lies a bluebird that's flown away."