Sleepless

from Dream of the Fisherman's Wife (Graphic Narrative in progress), Miranda Field, 2011

            I Do Not Sleep For Sleep Is Like The Wind 
              And Trees Amazed

                             


                           Not sleep for sleep is like the wind and trees amazed

                           By sleep's persuasive gaze

                             
                           And germinates

                           Inside cicada cochlea—

                            
                           Do not you sleep, like me, do not you sleep?— then eats these 

                           Seedlings up, unseen.

                             
                           In glistening jelly themes hollower than Appalachian mines, among pines,

                           Praise, applause, themes—my subtle worms—combine

                             
                           When moon a world-dividing language sings,

                           Above the hook-and-ladder's dipthonged, drunken,  ruby fountain sounds . . . 

                             
                           Such is my state, my stateless mind—

                           Widowed turtle, green mother in some shady grove,

                             
                            Lost in her native tongue. 






              Arnica / Ambien / Absolution

                              
                           Who ever learns to go to sleep definitively? 

                           No mortal— animal or vegetable— 

                           intentionally sinks his vehicle in so soundless a lake.  

                           To put myself to sleep, I let rise to the surface of my mind the bodies in the 
                                       reservoir 

                           this moment painstakingly changing from opaque to phosphorescent.  

                           All the while the whole night sky assists, the weather

                           adds catalysts drop by drop to time’s carefully calibrated experiments.   

                           I take a half pill, a sign ignites—a V A C A N C Y

                           in rain.  I take a whole, one-and-a-quarter—

                           the flame’s a flicker.  No sense 

                           asking who I am then.  Caught on a twig 

                           in the tree, the aura-like cocoon’s lit up by winter sun—

                           the least of its worries the worm.









I Do Not Sleep For Sleep Is Like The Wind And Trees Amazed was first published in Bomb; reprinted in the anthology Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts & Affections, University of Iowa Press.


Arnica / Absolution / Ambien first published in Columbia Journal.