Sleep

The walls, buried back by bookshelves,

Seem to drip with the knowledge

That, as much as purple is your favorite color,

There is a seemly time for burrowing

Into your pillow’s slowly-steadied earth.

And yet, each night you are a waylaid warrior

Mirrored by the mind’s gripped Now of a day’s long worth –

The sun-steps of the daily pledge

You make, to fight sleep with a clamoring song

That spills in small grandeurs of rising wealth

The sheer wake and measure of you –

And yet, each night you picket the sky

As though it were a tarnished darkness,

Warring your warbles, draped in the fancy-dress

Of a protest, shouting colors at that arc of massive blue,

Because it is unwelcome, an ocean

That wants to hold you down, and to drown you to

Nether regions of nightly naught, unpieced again.

And so, we dare not press the plea

Of timeliness, seemliness, the due and proper cue

Omar Sabbagh- 27042021

To unstrap the wings that may have guided you

Through the day, a wide unvanquished traveler,

Because even here in the seam of sleep

You may need them, once more to see.

(Omar Sabbagh)

For Faten and Alia Sabbagh