#5 Sleep

Sleep

~
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-- Poe

~
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
-- Shakespeare

~~
And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
~D.H. Lawrence

***

Sleep… such bliss if we do it well and such a nightmare if we do not yet we have so little control of the act of sleeping. I’ve never loved to go to sleep and never loved to lay abed yet I can remember how precious sleep was when I feared going to sleep while I was in the hospital for six weeks. I slept when Larry was there to protect me.

How do you sleep? In quiet? All bundled up? Fitfully? Alone? With a snorer?

I have apnea and sleep with a machine. I sound quite like Darth Vader and feel like a fighter pilot. I run a fan to drown out the Vader breathing and still sometimes Larry snores loud enough to wake me.

Anyway, when it is time to sleep wherever you are:
Goodnight room
goodnight moon
goodnight cow jumping over the moon
goodnight light and the red balloon
goodnight bears goodnight chairs
goodnight kittens goodnight mittens
goodnight clocks and goodnight socks
goodnight little house and goodnight mouse
goodnight comb and goodnight brush
goodnight nobody goodnight mush
and goodnight to the old lady whispering "hush"
goodnight stars, goodnight air
goodnight noises everywhere.
~~Margaret Wise Brown