Like Sleep, but Brittle
Like sleep, but brittle,
a film that crackles
from each toss to turn
and then returns
to the starch of wakefulness.
And still the moon stalks
across the floor, its snarl
a predation of light
ready to sink shafts of claw
into sleeping wood.
My shallow breaths
pull at the hours, each a gate
of brass and hinged shadow
that will not open
until the knock of time.
But a cat purrs warmth
into my back, kneads the ridges
of my spine with soft throbs,
as I drift, almost unaware,
on the margins of a thin night.
(From the anthology, Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West, edited by W.C. Jameson and Laurie Wagner Buyer, Ghost Road Press, 2007.)
