Sleep Dancing
Sleep hovers over me,
lingering at the ceiling
with dark whispers.
I reach out with my mind,
my restless body
seems to reach out too;
my body wants rest.
Sleep wanders the room,
having captured my sighing partner,
torturing me with its sardonic smile,
just beyond my outstretched exhaustion,
dancing to my discomfiture.
Sleep settles on the bed,
breathing steadily
but refusing to touch me
until the moment beyond reckoning
when he wraps me in his dark wings
and bears me away.
Peter Cartwright
November 2017
