The Smoke of Sleep

The Smoke of Sleep
by Gideon Burton

The smoke of sleep unfolding over deep

And hollow chasms of this streaming night

Of dreams, of semi-dreams and mist, of bright

Misprisions, shadows doubling in the sweep

Of unaccounted time. Like water, weak

And weaving in the loom of loosened earth

Uncertain of its rhythms in the dearth

Of evening's thirst. There is no place to seek

No antidote to coarse confusions, no

Arrest, no pacing of the ardent flux

Around the center, holding place, the crux

And argument, unsown where one would sow

        The softest seeds of waking in the mind,

        To grow alive to daylight and its kind.

Photo: flickr - Jason OX4