Sleep is my escape so I entice it
I draw its velvet blanket over me
Until it has enveloped myself
Nothing can pierce or penetrate this surrender
Like an island out at sea sleep keeps away
All the troubles that haunt me
Sleep’s touch is warm like a lovers
Like a lover it draws me in deep
And soothes my incompleteness
And holds me there until my exhaustion is spent
It calls to me when I try to hide
And hides me when others try to call
Sleep berates weariness until the scourge does repent
I am devoted to sleep paying homage nightly
And in the afternoon if I am feeling unsprightly
Sleep’s shrine occupies spaces sacred and not
Like the honeymoon suite and the park bench
The abbey’s cloists and the sailor’s wench
The princes’ chair and the digger’s trench
Sleep stands on a train, huddles in rain,
Captures others at the wheel
It is the iceberg that convinces steel
To relinquish its strength
And allow the stricken vessel
To plunge to the ocean’s depths
It flirts with death in a winter’s frost
Softens the blow of summer’s midday fist
Jousts with illness while the body rests
And causes pain itself to desist.
No greater ally have I than this
But to close my eyes and be at peace.