at last, she sleeps.

Perhaps it is the changing seasons, the barometric dips in spring's pool, the stars aligning, some pervading air of unrest... have not slept for many days... and apparently I am not alone (for once), but seem to be learning of many friends who share this current nocturnal unrest, this series of waking nights woven with bizarre dreamscapes and the scrolling demiconscious thoughts.

Tonight, however, I will sleep under the protective wing of Night. I crumple weakly and wearily and dazedly into her feathery bosom, sink into her 1000 thread ct embrace, and pray that I dissolve seamlessly into slumbers beneath the ambien veil...



Thus, my favorite poem... a beautiful beautiful beautiful dream of a poem:

Variation On The Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

- Margaret Atwood

____________________________________

... and perhaps another vivid glimpse, the images the images the images...


The Top of the World (excerpts)

V

I go out.
I dream that I am going out into the snowy night.
I dream that I am carrying
With me, far, outside, there is no turning back,
The mirror from the upstairs bedroom, the mirror from
Summers past, the boat at whose prow
We, simple, pushed forward, questioning,
Deep in the sleep of summers that were brief, as life is.

In those days

It was through the sky gleaming in the mirror's waters
That the magi of our sleep, as they withdrew,
Would spread out their treasures in the darkened room.

VI

And in the rustling of the night sky
The beauty of the world bent down
To see her body reflected in the closed water
Of the sleepers, which branches out among the stones.
She brought trusting mouth and breath
Close to their lightless eyes. She would have wanted
Her brighter breast to appear beneath the shoulder
In the folds of her still closed robes,
Then day was rising around you,
Our earth the mirror, and the sunlight
Hemmed your bare neck with a red band of mist.

But here I am now
Standing outside the house; everything is motionless
Since it is only a dream. And so I go on, leaving,
It hardly matters where, against a wall, beneath the stars,
This mirror, our life. And may night's dew
Condense and flow, over the images.

- Yves Bonnefoy,
from 'The Top of the World'