Finally, Sleep

 

Sleep, that blessed escape from the cares of the day, is not always easy to come by ... but I've slept well for two nights in a row ... and I woke up this morning thinking about a certain poem.

It's a poem about those mortal enemies - writing and sleep.

At least I've found them often directly opposed to each other. When I'm in the throes of writing, sleep is the last thing I want ... and then, sometimes, when I sleep before I've finished a project, I wake up feeling writing-deprived.

"This attic room" used to be the place where all of my serious writing took place. Excluding, of course, those frantically written notes while waiting at the bus stop, or in the doctor's office ... any place I had a few free moments and an idea that just wouldn't wait.

You know the story about that.

That place just beneath the eaves was peaceful and quiet ... and when it rained, I enjoyed rain's gentle cadence that accompanied the tick-tick-tap-tick of the keyboard, the rustling of papers, the stifled yawns, and ... finally, a bit of sleep.

But I've grown more sensible. It's only occasionally that I climb that extra set of stairs in search of that quiet place. Nowadays, I find other, more accessible places to do my serious writing.

Still, I miss those evenings up there. Especially on rainy nights ... I find myself pausing to think about those crinkling ribbons of light, the words which came streaming across the screen as I continued my quest for a poem, in this case:

 

FINALLY, SLEEP

Ribbons of light

crinkle across

the glass atop

this attic room,

moving slowly

to the cadence

of gentle rain,

then vanish

in the quiet

of these small

hoursthat call

me to sleep.

© 2001

(originally published in St. Anthony Messenger)

 

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Today's word: ribbons