Insomnia. 17 February 2024.
Listening to the dark
I hear my heart
Beating it's fist against the wall
Of my rib cage, as if to say
I'm alive and heed me always :
The arrow of time makes the wind
Turn colder in late winter
And now is the time
I might stop to rest without
Asking you
So my eyes stay snapped open
In featureless space
Above and around me
Quiet and blank as an immersion tank
But if this is all the time I have
Then I want the doors of my mind
To swing open tonight,
Finally
Just for once
So I might see what lies beyond
The familiar veil of daybreak
And the rhythms of mortal life
Would I ascertain
That like the wind
I do not cease but merely
Turn a corner and go
To explore another forest
Another mountain top
A labyrinth of streets ?
But nothing happens as usual
So I put on Robert Plant with my headphones
Singing 'Going to California '
The guitar notes tumble and glide like
The play of light and shadow
On a river at evening
And he uses
that old gesture and the eerie scream
As though hinting, below the story he tells
Of the stirrings of other things
Things that dance
Below the rhythm of dark and daylight
Life and it's passing
Oyr cat visits me, a white ghost
Soundlessly plumped against my chest
She rumbles quietly
Keeping me company
Honouring my solitude with hers
But I turn ceaselessly and finally
She gives up and moves away
Not to abandon me as such but
To keep to a familiar, reassuring pattern
She understands that the night
Is for staying awake and brooding
And my life's companion lies
Breathing gently
Turned away from me in blessed sleep
Her body a deeper shadow in the darkness
And the night owl calls one more time
Before the dawn breaks.
