To Catch A Gnat

It begins again
with a gnat in my ear
as I’m trying to sleep
that will not let me go,
that evades the swiping 
and keeps buzzing
until I am forced to exchange
my place in the bed
with this place on the couch
and the keyboard
I’ve been estranged from
that does feel like mine
again, not yet. 

I start as if
I’d never been here before — 
yet I have lived,
wept, laughed,
puzzled, and chased 
buzzing gnats
from my ears
over thousands of early hours
while being here.

Sitting here again, I start
as if I’d never started before 
and never before said
these same things to myself
while swiping at a gnat,
asking myself the whole time
why a gnat always finds me
at the least opportune moments
and drags me from wherever I am
to a keyboard
or a notebook 
to humble me with its buzzing
as if either
could drive a gnat away
for good this time
after never having worked
before. 

The gnat always claims
it’s going to work this time,
promise. That’s how the buzzing
translates. That’s what 
the promise sounds like
this early, before you can
disagree, before you can swipe
one more time at your ear,
before you shut down and sleep
and wake up later to find
that yet again it hasn’t worked,
at least not yet.

I tell myself 

maybe it will go away
all by itself one night,
and maybe that night
what will wake me
is the longing
to hear it again,
just one more time,
for old times’ sake;

and maybe there will come a night
when it comes back
and that will be the night
when I at last
catch the gnat and hold it
in my hand and stare at it
small and fragile there
on my palm,

and maybe I will weep for it
as I sit on the kitchen floor
and for no apparent reason
wonder why
I’m hearing nothing now
but can’t go back to sleep,
at least not yet.