I am so afraid of sleep, a Poem by Charles Bane, Jr.

I am so afraid of sleep
by Charles Bane, Jr.

I am so afraid
of sleep then
I remember a
hiking trip alone
and sheltering below
a ledge of stars.
So much dust
must constitute, I thought,
a honeycomb for the lips of
yeshiva boys or an
interior of ascending
steps to the "Himalayas
of the soul". My night
watch was met by a band
of Perseids straddling
roofs and trees. Science
thinks particles are
scurrying from universe to
universe and when caught
in traps and released, they
leave fields of littered
interstellar shells and the
gravity of my cold, stamping feet;
they outline unnumbered game
deep in wilds of river stars. I
wanted to provision my
birch canoe, sweep their banks
and fire signals at their boundary
of our eastern dawns.

Charles Bane, Jr. , has authored The Chapbook ( Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems ( Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as "not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them." A writing contributor to The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida: http://www.charlesbanejr.com .

Copyright 2014, © Charles Bane, Jr. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.