I Do Not Sleep For Sleep Is Like The Wind And Trees Amazed

Not sleep for sleep is like the wind and trees amazed

by sleep’s persuasive gaze

and germinates

inside cicada cochlea—

do not you sleep, do not you sleep?— then eats these

hatchlings up, unseen.

In glistening jelly themes hollower than Appalachian mines

among pines,

praise, applause, themes—my subtle worms—combine

when moon a world-dividing language sings,

above the hook-and-ladder’s dipthonged, drunken,  ruby fountain sounds . . .

Such is my state, my stateless mind—

widowed turtle, green mother in some shady grove,

lost in her native tongue.

“I Do Not Sleep For Sleep Is Like The Wind And Trees Amazed” first appeared in Bomb (Fall 2003).