Poems ✍️

SLEEP is a maker of makers. Birds sleep. Feet cling to a perch. Look at the
balance. Let the legs loosen, the backbone untwist, the head go heavy over, the
whole works tumbles a done bird off the perch.
Fox cubs sleep. The pointed head curls round into hind legs and tail. It is a ball of
red hair. It is a muff waiting. A wind might whisk it in the air across pastures and
rivers, a cocoon, a pod of seeds. The snooze of the black nose is in a circle of red
hair.
Old men sleep. In chimney corners, in rocking chairs, at wood stoves, steam
radiators. They talk and forget and nod and are out of talk with closed eyes.
Forgetting to live. Knowing the time has come useless for them to live. Old
eagles and old dogs run and fly in the dreams.
Babies sleep. In flannels the papoose faces, the bambino noses, and dodo, dodo
the song of many matushkas. Babies-a leaf on a tree in the spring sun. A nub of
a new thing sucks the sap of a tree in the sun, yes a new thing, a what-is-it? A
left hand stirs, an eyelid twitches, the milk in the belly bubbles and gets to be
blood and a left hand and an eyelid. Sleep is a maker of makers.