Sleepless In The Burg

I often suffer from sleeplessness. Since I was young, thinking back as far as when I was no more than ten, sleep has been an elusive and unreliable event. My brain will simply not shut off and let me go, let me drift to the bottom of the dark pond called sleep. I consume an alchemist’s concoction of medications compounded to over ride my hot fired brain, but it does not always work. I simply get less sleep, sometimes none at all, awash in chemical stew that leaves me feeling hung over. Nights when sleep won’t take me, in advance I can feel the neuro-chemical process that kicks in, then assumes command of my brain. It’s like hearing the rumbling of an army off in the distance, thumping bombs, marching feet, rumbling trucks of an approaching front. And then I know – I will be awake, tortured for hours, restless, ill feeling and just waiting. Waiting for daylight or a miracle to let me go. I lie awake, listening to the night sounds of my house, my husband’s breathing, my dogs twitching legs. Sometimes, I do math problems. I pick a long number like 1,331,750 and divide it by 15.3. Over and over I start the problem in my head, but get lost along the way. Then I start over. I keep at it, in the dark, until I either reach the answer or I’ve tricked my brain into clicking off for sleep. There is no rhyme nor reason for my sleeplessness; I don’t have to have some anxiety or worry or event on my mind. It does not have to be the full of the moon. Though all of these things can jump start the toxic brain chemistry, often it is just nothing. Last night was one of those nights of torture.

---

SLEEPLESS

It’s a fight

Waiting, waiting

for the light,

for dawn.

So tired,

I can’t even yawn

And every hair

Annoys

And every sound

Pounds.

A clock

Strikes the hour

One, two, three

“Please!” I cry

For sleep

Or death,

Whichever will come

Before the rising sun.

                                                                                       Robin Riley Robinson

---

Sleep would be a golden goose.

Canada geese and goslings, Upper New Meadows River May 3, 2010

                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Domestic Geese, Phippsburg