March 29: Restless Sleep, Tired, "Monk Hasn't Slept A Wink in 86 Years: A Sestina"

I'm tired.  It feels like I have't slept in about four or five days, even though I've been going to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 almost every night.

Last night, I laid down at 9:30, got up to brush my teeth, and then went right back to bed again.  I need to get real sleep, I guess, that isn't disturbed or restless.

Saint Marty doesn't remember what that kind of sleep feels like.

Monk Hasn’t Slept A Wink in 86 Years:  A Sestina *

by:  Martin Achatz

His eyelids as transparent as Superior water,

The monk breathes prayer in his dark

Cell, prayer for the mosquitoes on his arms,

The starling outside his window, broken

By a hawk’s claws, the father he met who weeps

For a daughter, hungry ulcers

On her hands and legs.  The monk blooms ulcers

On his tongue and lips, drinks pain like water

From the injured air until his body weeps

Blood, until his skin crawls with rose-dark

Bruises, his vigil thick with days of broken

Stigmata, with sleepless nights in the arms

Of green anguish, incandescent arms

Laced with groans and pleading, with bright ulcers

Of hope.  Good Friday, he kneels beside a broken

Pilgrim, washes her twisted limbs with Lake water,

Chrism, and salt.  Her dark

Scars split open under his hands.  He weeps

For her, for her wounds that won’t heal, weeps

For Christ, His raw and flowing stripes, His arms

And legs, crushed by the dark

Weight of love.  The monk knows this love, ulcers

Fresh as summer blueberries on his heart.  Water

Striders stipple the midnight Lake.  A broken

Moon rises in a starless sky and broken

Light touches the shore where a girl weeps

Over him, his young body, her water

Touch on his thighs and chest and boy arms.

After ninety years, he still tastes the ulcers

Of her tears, carries the dark

Burden of her love this vesper night, a dark

Gethsemane that rains fat olives, broken

And black and bitter, in his heart.  New ulcers

Unfurl and breathe.  Their perfume weeps

From his old and tired pores, from his arms

Stretched and nailed to the moon, the shore, the water,

Superior.  The dark tomb of his heart unseals, weeps

For rest, for unbroken sleep in love’s arms.

Her kisses, sweet ulcers, fall on him like rainwater.

*Title taken from headline in Weekly World News