Not Sleeping

I will tell you the truth,
there are days all I want to do is sleep.
I feel no pain when I sleep. I feel no despair.
I do not criticise myself when in the arms of Morpheus.
The world can go it’s merry way without me
and that is a tempting thing. Lord knows
I withdraw enough when awake, constantly craving
peace. Stillness. Emptiness.

At night, I sleep like a baby. Stereotype of course,
but true. I sleep the sleep of the exhausted,
and little of it physical. I rarely wake in the night
save for a random particularly vivid dream,
usually of love or of an atmosphere of love,
my brain yearning in the night.

You can’t argue that that – dreams of love
are preferable to the world we live in. And so
the temptation is real. To sleep. To live in a world
that is not quite real, but feels real, so vivid
that at times I weep when I wake.

Oh yes, the temptation is real. I feel it this moment
at mid day, half my chores and responsibilities met.
I feel it.
and fight it.

For there is work to be done. And that is how I was raised.
To do the work. No matter what, do the work. And when it is done,
THEN you rest. But only for a while
for the work is like the wild grass, always emerging anew.
The tasks ,not so important in themselves
as what they do for me, remain. For all of us I suspect,
giving us purpose, for the sleep of the honestly worn
is far more restful than the sleep of a man avoiding.
and so, another cup of coffee. A deep breath.
a short walk, and then, always, the work.

About this poem.

Semi-autobiographical at certain points in my life (not particularly today). Most depressed people get it. Most overwhelmed people get it. Maybe you. Or if you are particularly blessed, maybe not.

The picture was taken at “The Mount.”, Edith Wharton’s wonderful home in Lenox, Mass.

Tom