2:23am (Poem)

It's 2:23am and the rain's just started

You can hear the sleeping breath of your children and the grunting sighs of the dog

You can feel the prickling buzz of fatigue down your left leg but the moment is wrong

(If sleep is a wave, as your therapist used to say, the tide is receding away past the horizon)

Googling, not surprisingly, doesn't help.

So what is there to do but try to unhook:
let the mind meander:

- the taste of Pad Thai at dinner
- the disquisition on the growing of orchids by the lady in the supermarket
- the discovery of exoplanets and the hope of other (or, perhaps, just some) intelligence
- the play of half-sick shadows on the wall

One of the children's picture books is about a soft toy elephant called Harry
who is unable to sleep

And you think about that, and think, like Harry:
what if sleep never ever comes at all?

It doesn't matter. Here in the deep marches
where weird things climb out from inside
it's not relevant what the clock says

It only matters what battles you can fight
and which ones you can walk away from

- Kathy, 24/02/17