The world is always half asleep
Deep into dreams and lurching into light –
Quartered into struggle with trite affliction,
Inured to fracture of attention.
We never think on life’s dark portion
Spent still in bed and blind
To luminous stars at night,
Deaf to morning birds in song.
And I have wondered upon my waking,
Taking in her sleeping form
That seems a different woman in repose –
Whether she will know me
Or hear the words I whisper in her ear;
I cannot know if she remains the same
As in her waking laughter coy,
Smiles soft and fleeting;
Or whether she will change
When pain comes fresh with the morning.
All this to say that she is gone
When the lids have closed, and breathing slows
Till worlds have crashed in the cool quiet
Of her soul;
She like the child at slumber’s edge
Becomes a creature of peace.
Yet I, in self-loathing longing for her to arise,
In part wishing her to softly dream
And still somehow wait for her stirring –
In yearning for unforgiving sun
And her shutterfly lashes, without burden, to part –
I am then a child of wrath.
