March 24: Another Poem, Elizabeth Bishop, "Insomnia"

Here's another great one from the Poet of the Week.  It's about a subject I know a little bit about.  Sometimes, I can't seem to shake off my worries at night.  I worry about house fires and burglars.  Bankruptcy and unemployment.  Why Selena Gomez still dates Justin Bieber?  Who's going to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry this year?  These things keep me up at night.

Saint Marty needs to take a sleeping pill and go to sleep now.

Insomnia

by:  Elizabeth Bishop

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

Really, what does Selena Gomez see in this idiot?