Something in Sleep

Awakened: I make it to four o’clock: pre-
dawning morning: decide that the new day
is now. Sleep is a hickory-dickery dock –
swerving and blocking, it scoops up
and gathers a smatter of gorse flowers, here

and there over the heath of my night: I start –
and alight for a moment – then slip down
again: more curving oblivion bids me return
to the moors: barren Scotland – stark heath
of a consciousness – ah, but the dream’s

not the point – something less fathomable
seems to want to anoint: blur the distinctions
between being here, being there, being now,
being then: what, where and when have
a tentative bumbling relation to how:

whiffling and tumbling and swishing away
and then back: it’s hard to tell fullness
from lack. Here’s what I think may be cracking
the egg: perhaps I am able at last to
renege on this white-knuckled grasping:

achieve some deliverance from my tight grip
on one bit of an anything lasting. Cool
and delicious moon glow – a solicitous
throw of illumining softness: bright-lit.
Whatever it lights is what lights it.


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