sleep

I sleep in defiance of the day . Sleep into it, as if pushing past 6, 7, and now nearly to 8, will take the day's teeth out. As if in those later hours, I will be able to push open the door and glide in. But even at 8 the day comes, and I walk into it, and still I have to write.

Before the waking there is dreaming that appears to me exactly as a maze - small interconnected boxes in the brain, on a screen before my eyes. THESE ARE YOUR THOUGHTS the brain says. YOUR ARE A MUDDLE. I breathe. I remember what the good monk said about meditation. I lie and breathe and try to make my brain go blank. I sneer at myself imagining that I am caught up in the haughty expectation that life can be improved by lying still, by having spaces between thoughts, by going blank. And then I fall back to sleep. Another hour gets knocked out of the day. The clock offends me. How could it be so late? How could I so lack ambition. It's nearly 8. I am relieved.

Today is Saturday. Outside, a narrow uneven crust of ice covers nearly everything. The elderly in this town are house-bound. Before this became clear, I would find them stranded on the sidewalk, unable to cross the heap of ice collected at the curb to get to their houses. I propped one up on a dry spot that first night and tied up Zelda, then walked her home. She praised me to god. She said she was eighty-four and her legs no longer did exactly as she wanted them to. (Ah, but you are out shopping, it's all good - this is the glory of the city - walking out to groceries. Sure to find someone to help you home). The next day, even the dry spots of the sidewalk were ice, and she and everyone else like her, was gone. I wonder if they sleep in. And when they wake up, they are no less trapped.

When I wake up, there is writing to do. But also this - a child, sometimes two, climbing in bed with me, giddy at the thought of weekend, charmed by my sleep crazed hair, chiding my breath. My beloved has made coffee and this day, no doubt, crepes or pancakes. Zelda lifts her head in anticipation of one long stroke down her aging fur, and when she gets it, whacks her tail against the hard wood in rapture. So exactly whose teeth are you trying to knock out by delaying these greetings?

I'm not sure. Maybe I should go back to bed. I'll listen to myself breathe. And when I get to the spaces between thoughts -the empty moments of clarity, I'll know. Oh, my.. Another hour down.