To Die to the Blues

But the earth is bleeding
and her limbs are so blue
all i can think that's left that i can do,
is sing;
for i am convinced that when God scraped his fingers across the universe
and folded the earth together like origami cranes
from the scraps of stars and sunlight that he gathered under his fingernails
that he sang,
that he sang the blues like Muddy Waters
and the earth, she breathed her first and came alive to the sound of song
and so when she dies,
she should taste the same honey that pours from the mouths of blues singers,
except no one is here but me,
God has even left,
and I don't know the blues.
So I stroke her rivers and I pat the summits of her mountains
and I sing the only song I know,
Etta James' "At Last"
and she swallows us whole.

-anna sluder

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