…tremendous lie of sleep… Poetry by David Stone

…tremendous lie of sleep…

By David Stone

Assorted Ideas, Large & Small

Was Cummings right?
Is it a lie untethering the common lie
tossing us like formless energy
into timeless space

where everything happens at once?

Among the insane features of sleep, did we
again stand together in
intimacy, and if not,
how did we know each other
before we met?

Did we in that moment walk hand-in-hand
along some shit-scarred medieval lane,
raw rush of life like fumes
in days where awareness quickened?

Did we share a safe nook in the rocks
up in the cliffs, where we ran
to escape the devastation
of savages from the north, and later,
did we find our way to a friendly colony
after days of wicked, untamed meadow,
our legs scraped and burning?

Were we brother and sister,
brother and brother, Mom and
Dad and our own offspring?
Did we share so much history
in a moment that never stopped?

Could sleep be so cruel it freed us
from withering, dithering time
and us like amateurs, fumbling
and bumbling with ignorance
we couldn’t identify?

Were we once on horses together
and we were ourselves champions
of some momentary contest
we believed consequential

only to be returned again to screwy streets
and times not so good as the rich past
always leaking time, leaking life
to become such intimate bumblers
after so many centuries together?

“One pierced moment, whiter than the rest…”
Is that the legacy, the one thing left?
As we wander in this agonized infancy,
knowing how hopelessly

might we know so little?

David Stone
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