Poem

Make the Bed

The city sleeps way past dawn

During the enforced lock down.

These morning gray clouds look blanketed,

Heaped up, fluffed, unruly.

I get that anxious feeling of seeing my unmade bed.

A deep itch prompts an obsessional reach

For the sky to find the edges.

Then I’m tugging at the corners

Snapping down the sides
Tucking them in tight.

The hollows in the billows

Of the duvet are just shadows

But I smooth them down all the same.

The sun lurks, bursting white through gaps.

By noon the clouds will have moved on

Dispersed by spring winds,

Burned off by the heat of day.

For the sun can be structurally ruinous.

What remains--- this clearness, the sun and this blueness, then the moon and the stars so luminous,

It’s almost too much,

Enough to ruin us.

For the time allotted to prepare always seems too brief

When the natural world drops its veil and bares its teeth.

At night, even the heavens gets cold and weary

And need to bundle up for a good night's rest.

I can hear the groaning lurch of clouds moving in

As I turn down the bedding and brush my teeth.

It’s time to slide into my squared off cocoon

Of blankets and pillows and sheets.

Set the alarm, count the sheep.

But the drift into sleep is an untightening.

The tenets of a delusional order fall away;

Pillows find their way to the floor

Sheets are bunched in a ball by my feet

And the blankets are nowhere to be found.

I always wake up shivering

Exposed pale legs,

Goose-bumped arms,
The scream without a sound,

Falling asleep without a shirt.

Wake up!

The sun burnt skin is only half the hurt

6/28/20