While I Sleep

While I Sleep

 

Time does not stop while I sleep,

breaths continue to turn the globe,

Europe dances above my head,

and bombs fall on Gaza while I sleep.

 

The gears keep working while I sleep,

machinery keeps crunching,

clouds form and rain drops and skies clear

and seasons pass while I sleep.

 

Books go unread while I sleep,

poems go unanswered,

thoughts wrestle to no end and

die in a dawn ambush while I sleep.

 

My daughters keep growing while I sleep,

possibilities germinate,

where will they go, what will they do,

how can they leave me in my sleep.

 

Tidal movements, and traffic lights, and moon phases,

and whale songs, and bread baking, and coffee brewing,

and street sweepers, and death, and birth, and learning,

and singing, and chasing, and barking, and shouting,

 

and life,

 

life does not wait for me

              while I sleep.