mist and moonlight and memory

 

 

 

 

 

 

I live in a well. I live like smoke in the well.

Like vapor in a stone throat. 

I don't move. 

I don't do anything but wait.

 Overhead I see the cold stars of night and
morning, and I see the sun. 

And sometimes I sing old songs 

of this world when it was young. 

How can I tell you what I am when I don't know? 

I cannot. I am simply waiting.

 I am mist and moonlight and memory.

 I am sad and I am old.

 Sometimes I fall like rain into the well. 

Spider webs are startled into forming 

where my rain falls fast, on the water surface.

 I wait in cool silence and there will be a day 

when I no longer wait.

Now it is morning.

- Ray Bradbury

from the short story, The One Who Waits 

with thanks to whiskey river