Stealing Time
You wait til you think
Every one is asleep- (is that REM sleep, stage 2, or stage 3?)
You have communed
with Netter and his nasties
most of the day
Erector spinae muscles are stiff; you
Sit on your last nerve
And in the darkness,
In the small, hollow hours (Do I know gastrulation well enough?!)
Biochemistry flowed through your brain
(Have I eaten today, or is gray matter switching to ketosis?
Is this profundity, or reactive hypoglycemia?)
You train your
focus for five minutes
on philosophy, raison d'être, raison du travail*
(some micrograph today looked like a raisin, steroid-associated mitochondria, you think)
You pause
In your writing,
Chuckling at having to resist
using abbreviations in
a poem.
This mottled madness is the meaning.
Dickens knew
this time.
You choose this
bridled schizophrenia
each day
and, each day, you
steal time.
Alison S. Hable