Insomniac (II)

A zero sum game,

this desolate hour,

playing thoughts against thoughts

as if sleep was but a battle won

and night not this petrified womb,

from where, stillborn,

I will crawl.

Behold an unruly chorus,

yet how silence beds down still,

like tundra plain – cradle

of all that comes to pass

when snuffed the evening glow

takes leave and outside coils

and lies in wait.

The murmur of expressway traffic

(an echo from another’s dream),

seems closer, stranger than before;

the rumble of a solitary train

that rides unseen through orange-flood streets

to arrive unbidden

upon this hour.

This desolate hour.

When the birds daren’t yet sing,

and when soon enough

the flush and groan of heating pipes

shall declare the battle lost,

and the day begin

as it means to go on.

February 2015