sleep/wake

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.


from Roethke's villanelle The Waking 


I wake to sleep some words have such a profound resonation in me I read them over and over until they're burnt into my eyelids and my breath and the space between the words and my eyelids melt into one amorphous multi-lettered vision opening/closing, sleeping/waking, this shaking keeps me steady


I learn by going where I have to go