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It's cloudy today and I am sad. I have this

underlying sadness that is like homesickness.

I know what's causing it and it doesn’t matter.

The thing about getting older

is that you know when you have sad days

that a happy one will eventually follow. You are better

equipped to not attach too much

to the sad days and can recognize

that they are like waves hitting the shore line.

They come in succession, a happy one and then

a sad one, sometimes precipitated by an event,

sometimes not. But you know that the sadness will never stick

around too long.

Except when it does.

You know it will wash away eventually.

If it rains, you can be sure the sadness will get washed away

and it will be followed by a sunnybrightclear fresh day,

where the sky is blue as your mind is cleared

from the water and the waves crashing over it.

I wrote an on-paper letter to J,

which I will not send.

I have an envelope of those at work, tucked away at my desk.

I sometimes think that if something happened to me

these would get read by a co-worker before they sent my things

home to my family,

but it doesn't really matter at that point, does it?

Maybe no one would read them, but I know I would,

if I found an envelope of letters to an ex-spouse

written by a co-worker.

But I am nosy like that. I like getting into other people's heads.

Other people's letters are fascinating to me.

It dawned on me this morning that I have not written a poem

in a long time. This does not sit well with me.

And I am also thinking about how most of my “work” lately

is just me working stuff out

with very little poetic merit. Is it too metta to talk about

a poem’s worth,

within the poem itself?

Is it too metta to think about the value of a life,

within the life that one is living?