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It has been a long time since I have gone through a bout of depression with strong suicidal tendencies. I still think of it once in a while, in passing, as though suicide were an immovable grove of trees along the railroad tracks that I speed past at 60 miles an hour, its edges blurred, its roots unseen, a flash of mottled green and blue that is forgotten by the time I hit the next station and think about other dimly-lit, mysterious trains. So in this temporary solemn time, I wonder about my days, the hours spent, the weeks to come and recall a passage from a book by Jose Saramago: "...to speak of yesterday, today, and tomorrow is simply to give different names to the same illusion."

The flesh and bones, the blood, the tears, the gifts! To know the almost unknowable in an instant of hope that transcends the hopelessness and fear of circumstance. Words devoid of meaning and energy give way to living destiny and impossibly endless fate. The universe at once an exhalation of the slaves and sigh of the sages who oil the machine and grace it with poetry and preservation.

Very poetic and very touching. [edited by moderator]...it is OK and normal and fine and well and good to be depressed and sad sometimes. Its called being human. As I have read all the poems in this forum I have noticed that everyone...almost everyone, writes when they are blue or feeling alone or desperate. DonnaFlippinReed and holden have both said that they usually write when they are down.That is how a lot of writers and poets are able to get those negative feelings out. Be glad that you are in touch with yourself enough to be able to speak and deal with sensitive topics like suicide and death and being scared. So many people are so paralyzed with fear that they cant get in touch with there true emotions and have to put on a fake smile and happy face with happy thoughts 24/7/365. I salute you, my friend. You are brave.I enjoyed it very much.. :D

Great, piece, Elpe. Interesting how your perspective has changed -- now able to see it in passing, the details perhaps comfortably blurred -- no longer so much part of you, but now a point on the tracks you can view with curiosity. You have become the universe, stretching more comfortably now, at last, but still trying to understand itself.

Of course... I may have got that totally wrong... but I absolutely adore your writing in any case!

Elpe,

A very beautiful & haunting piece. I've just been dealing with the attempted suicide of a very dear one. The trains going by have great resonance for me who very often travels England & Scotland by train. The mysterious little towns & villages with their forlorn yet hopeful stations and abandoned platforms reach out and cry for recognition, and I salute them as we stop or just pass by. I salute all the living, the desperately trying to live, & those who contemplate non-living. Yet only life offers possibilities. My late spouse fought several kinds of cancer for over 20 years--she did not go gentle into that good night. For her life alone offered a way to what I, perhaps stupidly, call, not heaven, but God's future. There's the present, the past, the past perfect, the future (anticipated), the future Perfect (the future anticipated as achieved)--and that's God's future to me. The train keeps going on the track, and in about four hours from London I'm in Edinburgh or Glasgow and then on a ferry to the Scottish Isle of Arran, And as the ferry approaches the island & I look through the mist, I can join Henry Vaughan, saying, "I saw eternity the other night,/Like a great ring of pure and endless light,/All calm as it was bright"--perhaps a "living destiny and impossibly endless fate" on that "island of illusion" that speaks of "yesterday, today, and tomorrow." I didn't mean to be so long-winded (an occupational hazard, I fear), but your lovely, poetic lines recalled a fear and a hope that haunts my living. Thank you, Elpe.

Cheers, love, joy, peace, & slainte,

Tam/Tom