Forgetting How to Fall Asleep

A train wails at the edge of night.
What sleep have I had? Very little...
Okay, concentrate, lie very still,
think of nothing at all, not even sleep.
But the day is swirling, my heart is racing,
my breathing is under my conscious control
(such a fragile feeling) - Okay, hear I go...
No, still wide awake...this isn't so easy.
I'll try maybe coming up with some rhymes:
Was it the tea or the chocolate cake?
Whatever it was, I'm still wide awake...
No, that didn't help -
The tree-shadows quiver, the rabbit-moon shines,
there are words on the ceiling in the crooked lines...
That's awful -
Every solar flare is rightfully named
after the one who first saw it, and had it framed -
Was that a half-dream? Now at last...
That's how I know that I'm fading fast:
nonsense thoughts intruding in,
there it is again:
something about horses
eating steaks with knives and forkses
from square leather plates...
the soft darkness around my face,
breathing dark light, it won't...be long...

A little orphan tear

A little orphan tear
slipped quietly out
from the asylum
of the eye
that beheld
such tender
and exquisite joy -
and fled swiftly away.

A Cautionary Tale

It was purposely and without remorse,

and with the aid of a reluctant horse,

that all the children out in the yard

pushed on the Old Wall very hard

until it toppled over with a crash.

Then Oliver, who was always brash,

surmounted in glee the pile of rubble

and said at last it would be no trouble

for them to come and go as they please,

they could even walk out among the trees

that surrounded the village on every side,

beyond the wall they had all decried.

But dusk was falling and light grew dim,

so Oliver, smiling, said unto them:

"Now off to bed - I will show you tomorrow

that being closed-in has been our only sorrow."

So each to their pillows and blankets withdrew

and dreamed of a world so wide and so new.

But in the night, the werewolves crept

from the forest and devoured them as they slept.

To sleep again

I must return to sleep again,
where all was starlight-snow
falling soft upon velvet-moss,
where the air was filled
with the music of mint-roses
and the silver shadows melted
under a tattered organdy moon.
Our fingertips touched,
and the words we whispered
took flight as paper moths
and fluttered in the water-wind
that shimmered and shuddered as it flowed
towards the distant waves of hills
quietly crashing in the tender twilight.

Cygnus Sorrow

With such fair grace, the amber light

had filled the chalice-sky of spring

and touched the swan as she took wing,

departing in serene and stoic flight.

But why leave just as the warmer clime

had settled in and expelled the cold,

when all is a dazzle of green and gold,

a triumph over the wintertime?

Yet there she goes with graceful head

pointed towards the northern hills,

to pursue the lingering winter-chills

that from the joys of spring had fled.