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"To sleep, perchance to dream," said the Bard. That is sometimes easier said than done.
Is your sleep that of
John Keats?
O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Even when the eyes are willing, the sleep may not come.
And it would be sweet if sleep brought dreams in this cold month about spring, as in the "Winter Sleep" of Edith Matilda Thomas
I know it must be winter (though I sleep)—
I know it must be winter, for I dream
I dip my bare feet in the running stream,
And flowers are many, and the grass grows deep.
Is this month's call for submissions "sleep" or "insomnia"? I think those are two sides of the same coin. Maybe your sleep associations are more like Rita Dove's "Insomnia Etiquette"
There's a movie on, so I watch it.
The usual white people
in love, distress. The usual tears.
Good camera work, though:
sunshine waxing the freckled curves
of a pear, a clenched jaw—
more tragedy, then.
I get up for some scotch and Stilton.
I don’t turn on the lights.
I like moving through the dark
while the world sleeps on,
serene as a stealth bomber
nosing through clouds...
Or is it more like the "Insomnia" from my undergraduate poetry professor, Alicia Ostriker?
...But it's really fear you want to talk about
and cannot find the words
so you jeer at yourself
you call yourself a coward
you wake at 2 a.m. thinking failure,
fool, unable to sleep, unable to sleep
buzzing away on your mattress with two pillows
and a quilt, they call them comforters,
which implies that comfort can be bought
and paid for, to help with the fear, the failure
your two walnut chests of drawers snicker, the bookshelves mourn
the art on the walls pities you, the man himself beside you
asleep smelling like mushrooms and moss is a comfort...
I chose as our model this month, a "Sleep" poem
from Rock Tree Bird by Twyla M. Hansen. I like the contrast of sleep seen from the perspectives of a child, teen and adult. I like the idea on this cold day that "the ancient ones" probably spent most of winter sleeping.
...the ancient ones
whose lives revolved around the same sun—sun worshipers—
who discovered fire, calculated the heavens, tracked stars,
who likely slept through most of this gloomy season...
What are your sleep associations? Do they come from your childhood, a baby or child's sleep, what dreams may come, or not come, along with restless sleep, nightmares, and no sleep at all?
Twyla M. Hansen was born and raised in northeast Nebraska on the farm her grandparents had purchased as immigrants from Denmark in the late 1880s. Hansen has a BS in horticulture and MA in agroecology. Not typical training for poets but study that brings one close to nature. Her books of poetry, include How to Live in the Heartland (1992), Sanctuary Near Salt Creek (2001), and Potato Soup (2003), which won the Nebraska Book Award for poetry. Hansen collaborated with rancher and writer Linda Hasselstrom on the collection Dirt Songs: A Plains Duet (2011) which won the Nebraska Book Award in poetry. She is a creative writing presenter through the Speakers Bureau of the Nebraska Humanities Council, and in 2013 Hansen was appointed Nebraska State Poet. She lives and works in Lincoln, Nebraska.
SKELETON KEY
In the dream, I was holding a skeleton key
and trying it in locks all along a hallway.
A hotel? Offices? It didn't open any doors.
When I woke up I had to look up the term.
It is AKA a passkey or master key -
but why skeleton?
The serrated edge has been removed
in such a way that it can open numerous locks,
so skeleton because it has been reduced
to its barest essential parts.
Aren't we all looking for the skeleton key
and for the door that it will open?
Katie Milburn
ASLEEP IN HEAVEN DREAMING THE WORLD
Life is but a dream.
I guess I’ve known that all along.
My non-dualistic
metaphysical take on things
as an adult hominid in the late Anthropocene
goes all the way back to that song
about rowing a boat,
the one we sang in nursery school
while I picked my nose
and considered the endlessness of time
before snacktime. How lucky for me
that Miss Banerjee didn’t say: “Children,
our liberation from clinging
to the world of appearances
and illusions, our final joyful
union with ultimate reality
and the oneness of all things
isn’t far away, in fact it’s here
right now, though you can’t see it
because you're looking downstream.”
How could I have danced to that? Instead
I clapped my hands in time
to a song about a little boat, merrily,
which made a big impression on me
because it taught me the joy of repetition.
As in rowing. As in clapping.
As in that happy adverb in the third line
that gets repeated four times
each time around. And since the song
itself is a round—different people coming in
and going out at different times—
there is no time when there is no joy. Theoretically,
theologically, mystically and musically,
the joy is constant and neverending.
Paul Hostovsky
A MASTER OF CHANCERY’S LULLABY
At night I confront the past
and the confounding puzzle
of Bartleby’s acceptance
of his futile dead letters,
his accrual of anguish.
Like him I will lie, eyes open,
Yearning for easy release
from filling coffers or join
in lining the sepulchers
of our kings and counselors.
I know the arch emptiness
of deep breaths and jumping sheep.
Ultimately I’ll exhale
as if by whimsy the last
conscious wish for idleness.
But unlike the scrivener’s
release mine recurs daily
when my rockaway flees past
the Tombs, the grub-man and the
bounds of petty piety.
Rob Friedman
POETRY IS CAFFEINE
From a dream landscape, I wake to the dark realities around me.
It is almost always 4 am and I start walking like a ghost in darkness
punctuated by light-emitting diodes from the many electronic devices
who are even worse insomniacs and seem to be humming a lullaby
interrupted by the furnace fan sending a cool then warming breeze
across my legs and the floorboards complain as I press down on them
my hearing finetuned so that each tick of the clock from the previous century
starts a tick-tock tick-tock mantra in me - no - it is my heartbeat
and the new moon is no moon outside but snow reflects a streetlight
and neighbors' security lights. Security is what we need at night
and I sit at the dining room table to write this poem
hoping that it will make me drowsy but it only makes me more awake
like a big cup of strong coffee and I want to have a cigarette,
but I have never smoked and I only drink herbal tea.
What had I been dreaming? I only remember that I was packing a suitcase,
and that I would never be ready to leave on time to go - somewhere -
that we go in dreams that look like this place and do not.
Pamela Milne
LOGIC OF WINTER SLEEP
All thru high school in that little house
with unnatural heat only at the other end,
my parents’ room –
I’d undress quick as frost
and dive between cold sheets
under a mountain of handmade quilts
from ancestors long gone to sleep.
Years later, in artificially warm houses
I’d lie awake with worry insomnia.
Now, husband passed
and just the cat, the dog and me,
woodstove guttering down the hall,
I dive between cold sheets
under wool blanket and quilted comforter,
knowing soon
my own body heat will warm me
into my nightlong cocoon.
Taylor Graham
QUELLING ANXIETY
If you awaken in the throes of darkness, anxious
about the new year and the recent demands
upon your life, embrace what’s here. Poor health,
the clutter of last year’s get-well cards, the poem
wordless on the bedside table. Don’t fret
about over-ripe bananas on the kitchen counter
awaiting transformation into bread, the blood stain
accessorizing your favorite winter-white sweater,
the dog’s whimpering at three o’clock in the morning.
Care not one iota about the trip of a lifetime you missed
at doctor’s orders or the memory you didn’t make
when you forget to save the date. Embrace what’s here.
The music that comes from silence, joy surfacing
out of pain, grace gifted for such an hour as this,
a little boy’s mud play after rain.
Jo Taylor
AS FAMOUS AS THE MOON
A poor man who had worked so hard
To stuff a sack of grain,
Was so proud when he got it home,
He strung it up with pains
From a rafter of his ceiling,
Secure from mice and thieves,
Then settled down for a winter’s nap,
But couldn’t get to sleep—
That big bag hanging over him
Like a future windfall;
So he fantasized the fortune
That to him might befall.
“One day I’ll sell this sack of mine.
There’s profit sure in grain!
With that I’ll fill another sack,
And do the same again.
“Before too long, I’ll be so rich,
I’ll sleep in a feather bed;
The girls will be all over me!
The fairest one I’ll wed.
“Before long we’ll have a son.
What will I call him, though?”
He glanced around the room, and thought.
Moonbeams pierced the window.
That orb above the shadowy fields—
What an auspicious boon!
A brilliant name for his brilliant son:
“As Famous as the Moon.”
Now, while he had been tossed about
In such a brainstorm,
A rat had chewed right through the rope
That held the sack of corn.
And soon as the unborn son’s name
Was said, that bag dropped down,
And killed the poor fool instantly—
While the moon lit the town.
Lee Evans
AFTER THE TEMPEST
with a nod to William Shakespeare
Be not afeared; the woods are full of noises
Sounds and sweet airs that delight and hurt not
An orchestra of sound, the chirrup of winged
and the buzz of wingless creatures
and above these, the caress of bow on viola
the wind in high boughs
Observe the branch on high
look closely and see chickadee
with its black bonnet plaintive song
If you stand still enough
it will rest its twiglike claws
on the palm of upturned hand
ephemeral as a wish
Lift up a leaf
soggy brown after a season on the ground
see ladybird in her red shell
punctuated by black dots
Allow her to crawl from one hand to the other and then
unclasp herself, unfurl and fly away again
Close your eyes to see the pale path laid out by deer
listen to the sun on your face
taste the breeze on your cheek
wend through alder and birch to a dappled spot
where you can lay and inhale the headiness
of decomposure and moss
Lay your body down in the berth of the earth
allow heavy eyelids to drop
the chattering of squirrels will be your lullaby
Feel the slow rotation of the world
or believe again that it is Helios who spins
around us
Dream yourself a home in the trees
a walk to sip and bathe in the stream
a meal of berries and nuts
Dream a winter shelter too
built of snow and log
Dream leather on the soles of your feet
with which to tread these paths
A dream so sweet that should you awaken
you would cry to dream again
Josephine LoRe
HIDE AND SEEK
Sleep - I like mine late
unless it's early -
as in well into the next day early
When work calls, slumber is refuge
but night sleep, beddy-bye sleep
now I lay me down sleep,
not enough sheep to count sleep
is something to put off
something that keeps you from other stuff
something that steals from you
regardless of what the health articles say
If it must, let it take me
when I'm past fatigued, beyond exhaustion
That undrunk drunk feeling
on the very edge of oblivion
Sleep seductive and delicious
as beckoning as Snow White’s apple
With its pull and push
its silky slide
into unconsciousness
gentle, imperceptible
effortless, without struggle
Neither friend nor enemy
rather the neighbor
with whom I prefer not to engage
yet cannot ignore
All methods of avoidance will fail
No fence impenetrable
And so, sleep knocks
Without a knocker
Without a door
Without invite
And together we go
The all-time champ
and I - the sore, sleepy
and undefeated loser
Terri J. Guttilla
TO SLEEP
When I was young
I couldn't get enough of you
Curled up in your arms
I was protected from
The big bad world outside
And all of its unknowns
As a teen, I resisted your affections
Stayed up late and boasted
I could do without you
Only to collapse
Sink beneath your heavy waves
Into a deep abyss
Somewhere in my middle years
Stress, depression and anxiety
Took a toll on our relationship
In retrospect, I think it
Caused you to back away
Build a wall between us
Now, in my old age
We are irreparably estranged
No realistic chance of reconciliation
We still share a bed from time to time
But no longer trust each other
As if, our union reeked of infidelity
It's not that I don't care for you
I do, and always have -- but
We cannot undo the hurt, recapture what we had
Frank Kelly
THE DREAM KING
I look through a keyhole in a dream,
And there is my father, eyes closed
In meditation.
Is he listening to the river,
To an owl’s call in the tall pine?
Thirty years have passed
Since we laid him in the ground
In a gentle winter rain,
And not a single dusk has fallen without him.
Peaceful sleep is the gift he has given me,
The deep, sweet river of repose
Beneath the Bridge of Dreams.
Whether I wake or sleep, when a quail bobs his head
At the foot of a redwood, when a late summer dawn
Whispers autumn in a hint of mist,
When the mystery of spring, with green
And green and then another green, catches me,
Unready, dazzles me, he who loved spring, summer,
And every color the earth and sea can generate,
And every dream can paint in the eye’s sky,
He who loved every bird he ever saw,
Breathes with me,
Whispers in the zephyr—
“Listen, smell, sleep and see!”
Rose Anna Higashi
DREAMLAND
(for Arianna, Cammie, and Amélie)
The sandman arrives
to dust our eyes
And waft us off to sleep
so we can dream
Of chocolate bears and other
scrumptious treats,
Of princesses and handsome
beaux, of unicorns and
Elves, of hummingbirds that
glint of gold and butterflies
The size of kites in meadows
stung with dew.
But then one night
our dreams turn wild
And nightmares plague our
rest, fiery dragons
Roar and bawl behind the
backyard fence,
Ghoulish trolls with glinting
eyes lurk beneath a
A bridge, and ghostly forms
with slimy knees
Slip up and down round
playground trees.
We wake in fear and down
we run to parents’ bed
For comfort, where warm and
safe we hide our heads
From creepy wraiths that taunt us,
then cuddled back
To sleep we fall as soothing
hands pat our heads and
Fairies waft us upward, onward
into morning’s light
We soar to another glorious day
to learn and play.
Rob Miller
FORTY WINKS
When do waking ambitions & restful hours morph?
Within twilight’s slumber & enchantment’s quiet.
What profits longer than wealth & mammon?
Teardrops & laughter, wild eyes & smiles. Naps!
Where can I merge reality’s limits & fantasy’s options?
Sleepy time odysseys projecting body & spirit on astral planes.
Who appears via portals amid nightmares & revelry?
Loved ones long lost, new flames on the horizon.
Why look to shadows for contentment’s secret?
Truths linger in shades while wishes coddle dream rushes.
How might I cross paths of friends past & present?
Seek lands of faerie, doze in galaxies of flickering stars.
So where does little death and my greater life conjoin?
In forests dark, mindscapes free, illusions unhindered.
Sterling Warner
SLEEP
It eludes me
like the word
I really want
that I'm thinking
about now
nude in bed
bird at the window
haunting me
I'm blinking myself
awake trying to see
the word's ghost form.
Seema Singh