Poetry Friday: Late at Night in Bed

Last night I woke with a scary scenario in my head and then lay awake worrying for a while.  Since my word for this year is "unafraid," I probably shouldn't even admit to these fears.  This poem is about the sounds we hear in the dark, and the way we interpret them, and the truth we keep from new parents, which is: even once your baby sleeps through the night, you won't.  Not like you used to.

Late at Night in Bed

By Gregory Djanikian
 

My wife tells me she hears a beetle   

Scurrying across the kitchen floor.   

She says our daughter is dreaming   

Too loudly, just listen, her eyelids   

Are fluttering like butterflies.

What about the thunder, I say,

What about the dispatches from the police car   

Parked outside, or me rolling over like a whale?

She tells me there’s a leaf falling

And grazing the downstairs window,

Or it could be glass cutters, diamonds,

Thieves working their hands toward the latch.   

She tells me our son is breathing too quickly,   

Is it pneumonia, is it the furnace

Suddenly pumping monoxides through the house?

So when my wife says sleep, she means   

A closing of the eyes, a tuning   

Of the ears to ultra frequencies.

(It is what always happens

When there are children, the bed   

Becoming at night a listening post,   

Each little ting forewarning disaster.) 

 

Here's the rest. 

 

I shared this poem before back in February of 2009.  You can see that post here.

 

And here's today's roundup.