☀ Today's Poem: "To Sophia" Bernadette Mayer

Now finally I've gotten to the bottom of it
I've got a few minutes left to tell the story of it
I gently wake myself up every day in the same delicate kind of dream's moment
Doesn't everybody wake up sometime to say
Don't bother me again just yet and how did I wind up here
I know it's not poetry to say so but how
Did I wind up having to move into another room to write another book
And while moving everything to have to study all the old things I've kept, endless
negatives and slides held up to the light with friends and trees and families on them
So many papers and even some checks, old tapes with another voice of mine
Exhaustion's neighbor memory keeps telling me what I used to think then I still think
Now nostalgia for a tree makes me dally at the identifying window
I'm donating to you, younger daughter, I'm one or was one
You need to sleep alone
Away from the exotic noisy sleep of groaning parents
Who don't even know what they do or say in their sleep
You need to drink thought more privately
And not awaken every night in the same energetic need
To be comforted and nursed like a baby

Sophia you can have my old dark room of wars
I'm moving my desk to Main Street to work under the lights
Watch out for the rising moon, the looming eastern stars
Let's exchange the awful peace of our nights