In This Dream, I Will Listen

I thought former Poet Laureate Billy Collins had  an amazing idea with his poetry180 project. One new, contemporary poem for each day of the school year. As a teacher I love the immediacy of a poem; we are into it and out of it, and nobody gets hurt. Yet, at the same time, I love that we can treat any poem like a Vegas style buffet; we can be there for hours tearing it apart.

Check out poetry180 at   www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Below is something new that I plan on adding to my new collection. I haven't settled on a title for the new collection, but I'm listening.

In This Dream, I Will Listen

We say we hardly slept,

 that crazy dreams woke us both

 from reclining chairs.

I know this heaviness around us,

a fatigue of recalcitrance,

 not a failure of sleep.

In the night I know your loneliness

even when your body undulates with the touch of a wish.

Our breath is an arctic hush on fallow fields,

we are never in the same room in darkness.

Where are you now? Who else floats within your secrets,

what would you have him say?

Perhaps we will sit in the twilight

 at the finish of some clear day.

We will not talk of sleep.

And in this dream, I will listen.