White Night
by: Mary Oliver
All night
I float
in the shallow ponds
while the moon wanders
burning,
bone white,
among the milky stems.
Once
I saw her hand reach
to touch the muskrat's
small sleek head
and it was lovely, oh,
I don't want to argue anymore
about all the things
I thought I could not
live without! Soon
the muskrat
will glide with another
into their castle
of weeds, morning
will rise from the east
tangled and brazen,
and before that
difficult
and beautiful
hurricane of light
I want to flow out
across the mother
of all waters,
I want to lose myself
on the black
and silky currents,
yawning,
gathering,
the tall lilies
of sleep.
I've never really been a sound or deep sleeper. Most nights, like Oliver, I'm awake with the muskrat in the white night under a palm of moonlight. It isn't that I don't want to sleep. More like my mind simply won't turn off. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I think of about a quadrillion tasks left unfinished, and I start obsessing.
As I type these words right now, I'm pretty exhausted. I find myself pausing, sometimes for several seconds, in between sentences. My eyes go unfocused, and my mind takes flight. However, once I publish this post, I will be fully awake and alert, planning out tomorrow's to-do list that I will, inevitably, not finish, either, thereby starting this whole vicious cycle over again.
If you have never suffered from insomnia, you just won't get what I'm saying tonight. There is absolutely nothing worse than being awake at 3 a.m., knowing that, in less than three hours, you have to get out of bed and face the hurricane of morning. You feel completely alone and isolated. I've had this problem since I was a young man. Sleep and I are just not on a first-name basis.
That doesn't mean that I don't get tired. In fact, it's just the opposite--I get tired, just at the wrong times. Nowadays, I take medicines to help me sleep at night. Sometimes, they work. Other times, they slow my mind down just enough for me to be able to yawn, close my eyes, and drift along on the black and silky currents of early morning.
However, I can tell that this evening is going to be rough. An hour or so ago, I was exhausted. All I could think about was stretching out on the couch and letting myself be carried away. Now, I'm fully awake. I have a book I could read. And a poem I need to write. I could grade some student papers.
Don't tell me to count sheep or drink a glass of warm milk or take a hot shower. None of these "remedies" work for me. Instead, I will brush my teeth, pull up Love Actually on Netflix (don't judge me), and just sit in the dark, waiting for sleep to make an appearance.
Emily Dickinson wrote, "Because I could not stop for Death-- / He kindly stopped for me--"
Saint Marty writes, "Because I could not stop for Sleep-- / He kindly sat beside me on the couch and ate all my Cheetos."
