Insomnia and the Eventual Release into Sleep

Do you suffer from bouts of sleeplessness? Once we find a solution to insomnia, we can at last release and relax into sleep and dreams. This poem contends with insomnia and a remedy for sleeplessness that sometimes works for me, when I finally remember to call on it.

Dear You Who Lie Awake at 3 AM,

thank you for being there for me, 

restless, so I can send you the peace

that alluded me, the release into dreams.

After the initial jolt alert, after

changing my t-shirt, drenched

in sweat, after thrashing and gnashing

in each pin-pricked thought and cell

of my body, as if lolling inside-out

in an endless lot of nettles,

after all the muddled efforts

I finally remember you, out there,

lost in the dark woods of your bed, 

tangled in your worries and regrets,

far from any clear path back to rest.

You there, sleepless and anxious, under 

the eaves on a dark, canopied street, 

or high-up in a light-drenched city complex—

All of us, stressed, stretched out taut across

this restive, hurtling humanness.

Sometimes, when I, at last, send out

my gristly but growing peace, 

my bungling yet burgeoning balm 

of quietude to find you,

I finally doze off . . . .       I will also 

do this for you — offer you my sleeplessness —

so you can finally crawl out of your coal mine 

of compressed thoughts, and fly forth to me 

with your small but gathering glints of peace.

Imagine! All of us at 3 AM, or whatever time

it is in each land, weaving a waxing web of prayers,

blanket of hush, nest of doves, gentlest, sleepiest love.