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
Stealing Time
Alison S. Hable
Wow what a poem. Thanks Sam.