Sunday, May 05, 2013

Version of Repose

I clasp my hands, feel the blood knocking
at the roots of my interlaced fingers. Dawn
is still far off: the ropes cast by the summer stars
barely drawing yet. The eyes that will see morning
are not these.

And not these glass marbles, glancing into mine --
quick, opaque, inquiring; pupils wide as death --
and the deft turn, the tufted ears describing
a parabola that hangs a moment in the air --

not these, either. She is gone
before her tail has quite begun.

The old prayers come comfortably,
and the mind settles, the precipitate
of thought coming gradually to rest,
river-silt homing in the lake bottom;
old staggered ambitions and regrets --

what is wished for -- what is dreaded --
drifting down, through the water,
to a dim, rippled version of repose


4 comments:

marly youmans said...

Lovely silk purse made out of the insomniac's sow's ear... I like the roots, ropes, the weird quick cat seen in abstract fragments, the silt homing.

(I have a slight wish that you had used a different title, rather than closing on words I already knew, though I don't object to that as a general rule.)

Word verification is "noWhet observation." Take out the "no" and it might be commentary.

Beth said...

A fine poem, says this other soul who's often awake and thinking thoughts she'd rather not, grateful for such repose as comes.

Robbi N. said...

Lovely. It captures the meditative state I know you were after.

Dale said...

Thanks for reading, dear friends! xo