The Arms of Morpheus

By Ronald Moran

 

It happened last night, the first time

in over

fifty years: I lay in bed for seven hours

awake,

without feeling the need to yawn or

the warm,

comforting sensation of trying to sleep

on my

 

right side, my standard sleeping aid.

No.

I had to wait for my sleep mechanism

to wake up,

to send me into the arms of Morpheus.

No.

Nothing I could even remotely identify

with

 

bothered me at all, my body so calm

I thought

my heart might start taking a long and

deserved

break from pumping, but, once again,

No.

So, I just lay there, thinking to myself,

What’s next?

 

I know there are techniques the sleepless

swear by,

but I wonder, Why do they then say they

are sleepless?

I fell into a dreamless sleep, a rarity

for me,

and woke as the Catholic bells chimed

at noon.

 

About Author:

Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review, Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Evening Street Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in thirteen books/chapbooks of poetry.  Clemson University Press published his Eye of the World in the spring of 2016.  He was inducted into Clemson University’s AAH Hall of Fame this spring.