Hi Fliss,
I'm glad you liked my sheep poem! Yes, the brown couch. I still recall it, it belonged to the retired father-in-law of our prep school headmaster, who served us a glass of squash and a biscuit for our Greek classes, long ago. We were two in number. I think your poem is splendid, and am moved to be reminded of how I'd thought the Eratosphere might be something along these lines, back in 2017 when a friend invited me to join. Planets, eh? Your planet seems worth a visit! What a splendid poem to dash off in an afternoon.
I am now going to look for my old Penelope poem, inspired by mignon. Ah, here it is!
Regards,
John
As Close as Tails on Coins
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
it says in Wordsworth’s “Intimations” ode.
I’m in bed writing, and before too long
I’ll sleep, just as the poet said. We close
our eyes and leave the ordered shores of reason –
as surely as the ever-busy day
gives way to night, as land gives way to sea,
unplumbed and pathless, and our fragile bark
drifts with the lunar tide like any leaf.
Or maybe sleep is like a field of some
unseen crop which we may yet remember
when we reach it; while the wind, that blows
where it listeth, comes from there to us
as we grow sleepy, touching eye and cheek,
stirring the mind to a new train of thought.
For sleep is close – as close as tails on coins,
or what we view in mirrors when our hands
rest on them. And my wife is sleeping now
beside me, even breathed, a little restive
as I write on. And yet, she is as far
from waking as a fish that never once
comes up for air, as far as truth from fiction.
All that we dreamt comes undone, writes Octavio
Paz. But like Penelope, we do it over.
1807
|