About 4 O'Clock

About 4 o’clock of this lovely spring afternoon
I noticed that I was awake, present exactly here,
free in my senses and relaxed as if I were a beast

of burden from whom a huge and subtle load
had been lifted,  a burden from which I hid
so that I could bear it and also bear myself

When I was last awake and alert and free ,
I have no way to ascertain, I might say it was
early last fall after I got back from China

I was sleep walking and sleep working 
and sleep fearing and sleep hoping,  I did not
know I was asleep, felt just like myself…

This waking is very pleasant, full of light
and grace and promise, although nothing too 
specific, nothing to start me striving

Dolphins and albatrosses and others sleep
one hemisphere at a time, because they have 
to breath at the surface, keep wings beating

Had my brain shut a part down because it
needed rest and could not bear the tumult
of waking, the wild streaming of possibility?

Here I was back again, all of me, baffled, pleased!

Strange inflections of the inner life, real
but resistant to being revealed, resistant even
to being  noticed, as if that were impingement.

Self awareness has limits, self’s a wild thing!


2014