The moral rot
of four in the morning.
The still hour yields
not a single dream.
The bed, soft thing
made for pity, is tainted
by wakefulness.
The brass lamp that
haloed us all to bed
glares unlit, glowing
warm in their dreams.
The spider plant,
cascading for love of
itself alive with sleep,
awaked by clumsy
loneliness closes her
hundred eyes, not here
to comfort you.
Quiet now at the blessed ridge!
A humming, distant,
rhythmic rises from
its far side to sing you
to your rest.
Closer now, humming
in the ear, waves topple
their own sand castle.
Closer still, tramping
and drumming come
heralds of the vast
machinery of night.
The white belly of all
things that fail to sleep
turns to them.
Whimpering, exiled
from the kingdom that
enfolds its fragile truth,
each thing stands alone,
bound to itself.

Image courtesy of © 2011 Thinkstock
Footnotes
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Michael Rowe is the lead editor of Classics of Community Psychiatry: Fifty Years of Public Mental Health Outside the Hospital (Oxford University Press, 2011).