#277: Blanket poems for restless souls 😴

"A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow." -Charlotte Brontë

Dear reader,

I’m back home in Calcutta, spending time with family and stuffing my face with ghar ka khana. Creating pockets of joy and laughter amidst life admin. Reading about dust storms and solar flares in a state of worry and awe. Attempting to make cyanotypes every time a little sunshine hits the windowsill.

I’ll be away from my bed in Bangalore for over a month this trip, which is an interesting timeframe to reframe narratives and fall into new routines. But in all this, I must admit, I miss my bed and the lightness of sleep.

Sigh.

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Poetry Corner

Artwork: In Bed by Federigo Zandomenegh

As I struggle to fall asleep tonight, I picked a few poem on beds and blankets to keep you company on this lonesome night in May:

1. Two Worlds by Raymond Carver

In air heavy
with odor of crocuses,

sensual smell of crocuses,
I watch a lemon sun disappear,

a sea change blue
to olive black.

I watch lightning leap from Asia as
sleeping,

my love stirs and breathes and
sleeps again,

part of this world and yet
part of that.

2. Dog in Bed by Joyce Sidman

This is how it is with love.
Once invited,
it steps in gently,
circles twice,
and takes up as much space
as you will give it.

3. 96 Vandam by Gerald Stern

I am going to carry my bed into New York City tonight
complete with dangling sheets and ripped blankets;
I am going to push it across three dark highways
or coast along under 600,000 faint stars.
I want to have it with me so I don't have to beg
for too much shelter from my weak and exhausted friends.
I want to be as close as possible to my pillow
in case a dream or a fantasy should pass by.
I want to fall asleep on my own fire escape
and wake up dazed and hungry
to the sound of garbage grinding in the street below
and the smell of coffee cooking in the window above.

Artwork: Sleeping Woman by Carl Vilhelm Holsøe

4. For My Wife, Reading in Bed by John Glenday

I know we’re living through all the dark we can afford.
I’ll match your inward quiet, breath for breath.
Thank goodness, then, for this moment’s light
What else do we have but words and their absences
and you, holding the night at bay
– a hint of frown,
those focussed hands, that open book.
to bind and unfasten the knotwork of the heart;
to remind us how mutual and alone we are, how tiny
and significant? Whatever it is you are reading now
my love, read on. Our lives depend on it.

5. Order by Dan Rosenberg
I hear you wake before I’m up myself
and snap to ready now before my eyes
crack from their crud to face your face today.
I hear you blunder toward my door. I hear

you crash it wide. The loosened hinges shiver
their frame, and now the house itself, awake
to the world and you, complicit, pulls me hard
as thunder from my sleep. You beat the echoes

to me, blear-faced, awash with night sweat;  
you drag a bunny by the ears to bed
and tumble graceless up the mattress, silent,
a drowsy rocket wanting, wanting something

I’m not awake enough to understand
but will be, soon, my son, and then we’ll go
to blaze the day, to stomp each puddle left
by the rain you never notice as you pull

me into the world, all leap and bowl, all grab
and fall. Today I’ll wake up better, call
the distance order, order it to be
a smaller thing. I’ll stand to make it so.

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Beautiful links to feast on

• Watch: Lost Sheep, a paper stop motion short film by Lukas Rooney ^

• This is gorgeous: Relics of the Wild by James Roper

• Mary Oliver Poetry For Sleep | Grounded Sleep Episode #30

• Inside Stefano Colferai’s playful stop motion animations of everyday life

• Oh, this comic by Reza / Poorly Drawn Lines ^

• Studio Ghibli Lets You Download Free Images from Hayao Miyazaki’s “Final” Film, The Boy and the Heron (Can’t wait to go see this in the theatres!)

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Signing off with the hope that the world as we know it doesn’t crumble away too soon. May the mindless violence and wars end, may we learn to be human again.

Wishing you a restful sleep tonight,
Rohini