hibernation

Exhausted; haven't been sleeping well lately. Tough to get a good night's sleep when you dream about work all night. But I'm not (for once) getting on here to bitch. I just keep having the first couple lines from this poem run through my head. Considering that it's springtime and supposed to snow later, it seemed like a fitting one to post.

...Okay, so I started this yesterday, and then didn't have the poem available to post. Here 'tis. I'm still tired & it's supposed to snow again tomorrow, so the relevance remains...


hibernation

tired, so tired, and this does not end here.
no, it never ends here. rows of small lead
weights attached themselves to my bones.
now they sway and clink whenever I move;
I walk as if under water. as if air were a force
I must reckon with. as if it drips and flows,
the task of inhale and exhale too much.

summer ebbs; I place myself in the quiet river
every day, offer myself to the water
asking for a baptism. like a frog I want
to shed my skin, emerge wholly new,
thrilled with wearing myself inside out.
I want to wrest myself from my skin, replace
my eyes, shed my hands and useless tongue.
let me hibernate, bury myself in the mud,
winter quietly; emerge rested, glad-eyed.

now deep in this waking dream, air sealed
within me, my mind draws pictures of spring
against my eyelids. I don’t want to get tangled,
caught half-born, eyes blinking, blinded.
the earth stirs around me, gathers herself, preparing;
she breathes in: my eyes open, I break from myself
I am free: alive: I can breathe –