(with thanks to W S Merwin)

Listen!
As the night falls
we say
thank you.
We stop,
alighting from parked cars —
we’re drawn out of bright rooms
(dinner still kissing our lips)
gazing at the sky
to say
thank you.

Through the hijack
and the burglary,
after the funeral
and the brain tumour
and countless doctors
in their sterile coats
we say
thank you.

Across miles
we say
thank you.
In alleys and doorways,
in taxis and lifts
we say
thank you.

In the newsnewsnews
of wars
and threats
and dictators
and notorious liars
we say
thank you.

Though the world groans
as the animals die,
as the forests fall,
as the rivers go still,
we say
thank you.

Faster and faster
we say
thank you.
With no one listening
we say
thank you.

Thank you
we say
and wave.
Though in the darkness
we cannot see
yet we hold out our hands
and
we say
thank you!

**********************************************************

This is a “cover” of WS Merwin’s poem “Thanks.”
Over at dVerse Bryan is doing a guest prompt and asking us to “cover” a poem by a poet we admire.
It was not easy to “cover” a poem (as singers cover songs).  I had to decide what my “voice” sounds like, what my words “look like” and then interpret the poem through my own life and experience.
It is still too close, I think, to the original to be completely mine.  But it is a good place to start, and it got me thinking and writing.
Try it!