You will suspect its presence
long before you first see it
drunk under your holiday table,
at first cute and then 
vaguely menacing.

It reminds you at once
of an ancient, shrunken,
once-feared uncle 
discovered snoring harmlessly
in a worn armchair.

Another day you will hear it whispering, 
answering your questions indistinctly 
in a tongue once used exclusively for
fragile treaties, falsely joyful
greeting cards, and scriptures.

You will glimpse it again
hiding behind sun-faded
plastic flowers left behind
in the dirt-speckled front window 
of a defunct store. 

You’re so surprised that it has not come
wrapped in a torn flag, raging flames,
blood-tossed and bellicose.
Is it what it appears to be?
It takes a while for you to name it.

You are curious about
what it may want, why
it’s staying so close, why it won’t
come out brazenly and 
stop you with a word or blow,

not understanding that for you,
it is not going to be
as blunt and heroic
as you’d prefer; instead
it will simply lurk until it is time

then tap you
with a single finger,
say softly, “Now,”
and lead you from here
to There. 

On the way it will say
one more thing:
“Sorry, kid.” You will
eventually agree
that this is better,

but it will take a while to get there.

I am this morning,
even after a night’s sleep,
as tired as a bird 
settling onto
a familiar branch
after migration. 

As we all do when we return
to a long missed home,
birds upon landing look around 
and try to determine 
how it has changed
since last season, but

nothing here looks different
than it did before I slept,
although I spent the night
filtering all I knew through 
long dreams that swooped
over seas and mountains.

It’s a disappointment to see
things have not changed,
but maybe it was a mistake
to dream as a bird,
to have believed in 
my own far sight

and long endurance. 
I’m beginning to think
it all looks the same
because I am microbial, 
was merely carried 
through my dreams by a bird, 

and am still seeing 
the same small landscape 
I was seeing when I began:
roots of feathers,
bumpy skin. Beyond them
are the same distant sea and sky

I can see wherever I am.
Thousands of miles
from where I began, yet still seeing
the same world; it’s enough
to put this germ back to sleep
and decide that there’s no point

in dreaming at all, although I’m certain
that tonight I will again
swing low over gray seas,
carried home to morning
on familiar wings
I have never truly owned.

Waking to wonder why
there’s no answer

to stumble across or
over?

If there’s
a statement here, someone

should make it — 
No. No, I won’t.

Been a sore and sorry night.
Am I staying there forever?

No, but
I’m not

being well today. Forgot
how, forgot

the when of the date
and time, forgot

competent
human being. It’s a

skill, they say —
happiness you have to 

work for.  I’m
underemployed

therefore and
supine in a dank bed — oh

that’s just
a weekday weak day, a

weakened weekend.
Go on without me.

Go. On and in me
is a burnt fuse —

go. It’s dark here
as I am.

Experiment:

a name given to 
a series of deliberately planned
and executed actions taken
with an eye toward
potential success but also 
with full awareness of 
the potential for mistake
or even disaster,
the point of which is not to 
succeed or fail, but to learn
from neither the joy nor the despair
engendered by whichever outcome,
but from recording and interpreting
the bare facts left bobbing
in the experiment’s wake.

If one could divorce oneself from 
joy and despair, one could theoretically
learn much from the long experiment
of living itself,

but nothing substantial
or useful.

1.
Not to be confused with insomnia
is polyphasic sleep where one sleeps early
and then wakes in mid-dark for an activity
such as sex or farm chores or writing or reading
or idle television viewing; 

when that is done
one returns to sleep and sleeps
until full waking. This is allegedly 
an ancient pattern that was common until
the advent of electric lighting broke us
of natural habits. It has enjoyed a resurgence
in the popular imagination
in recent years as we try to justify 

leaping from dream to awakening
in the middle of the night
without explanation. It sounds scientific
and right and logical and it’s soothing,
of course, to believe that there are reasons
for whatever happens to us.

2.
Portrait of a typical night’s passage
in the modern era:

evening comfort to later boredom to sleep aid
(such as cannabis or alcohol
or masturbation or exhausted rage
at the Great Unnamed)

to slumber to waking to staring 
at ceiling, at walls, at all of history
as preface to what is to come until this
kills enough urge to stick around
and see the outcome that we fall
back to sleep until the alarm sounds

and we rise unwilling to the New
that is the same Old.

3.
Polytheists might describe
the Mid-Night Waking as
a normal thing driven by local gods
at their shift change — they 
punch in and out and we’re the clocks
that register the bustle. 

Monotheists might say
it’s the moment we recognize our sins
or the glory of the One
and we can’t sleep through that. Atheists

might say we wake for biological 
imperatives long ago programmed. 
No one knows, say the agnostics.
All of them say we should try to make the best
of the time we have between the Sleeps,

although there’s something to be said 
that is not said well by any of them
or by any of us about the utility of sleep 
not merely for rest or for how it facilitates 
dreaming, but for how that unconsciousness
prepares us for and protects us from 
the fear we have of what we see
while awake; perhaps we wake in the dark
merely to take a breath before we plunge 
back into those better depths.

Maybe we’re meant to be whales, concealed
for long periods from the Light.

Maybe we’re meant to be comets,
passing through only at intervals.

Maybe we are multiple gods,
or multiples of
God, 

putting divinity
on the pillow for a spell,

learning to be comfortable
at letting it all Be.

In the dirt, a gleaming bead.
He picks it up — is it
glass or stone,
valuable or
trash?

He wonders if it matters —
if it’s survived 
underfoot
on this hard trodden path
for any length of time,

it has proven itself 
worthy of at least admiration
if not adoration. Lifts it
to his eye; looks through;
all he sees is sky.

He chooses 
not to choose a price tag
to hang upon
this uncommon fortune
found in a common place,

uses the small treasure to see
the farthest thing he can see,
the farthest anyone can see;
drops the bead for the next seeker
to find; moves on.

you have risen from
your accustomed seat
at the table

leaving behind
an empty bowl
once full of almonds
a few small scraps
of sharp cheese
on an antique plate
a drained glass of wine

you have left the room
and stepped
onto the porch
to watch moonrise
with new and old friends

turned from having
a simple dinner
into a life where simplicity
offers such complex chances
to glimpse the Divine

into the feeling
of satisfaction and joy
at having shared bread with others

and then under the full yellow disc
of the tide-drawing moon

to stand with them
arm hooked into arm
and shoulder
against shoulder

this night has been
a contained ecstasy
of perfected company
a peasant symphony played
behind the sharing of
almonds cheese and wine

this night has been all 
a soul needs from its body

When there’s a will, there’s a way;
when there are two wills
there’s a weigh-in,
a preparation for contest.

I looked the other guy
in the chest and said
this wasn’t going to be
good.  But enough in me

claimed the side of right 
to feel that a fast first strike
would be enough, and so
I struck first, dirty-style,

the kick to the balls, 
the worst thing defined
under the playground code.
Down he went, but I’d missed

how many of his friends were there, 
had forgotten I was old now
and hadn’t been on a playground
in years; fortunately they took

more pity upon me than the code 
would have suggested I deserved,
and I came away more or less 
intact, at least for the long term,

but I learned something that day 
about what boys some men remain
long after they graduate
from elementary school; learned

how many years a sense of panic
gained at eight can last, learned
how badly I wanted to be eight again,
and how easily that could happen.