Morpheus Dreams of Sleep
©December 9th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
I sift dreams, and drift through souls
Bringing stasis, wafting through
That place where poppies grow,
Whose redness, like blood,
Makes me nod, and nod,
But I never sleep.
I ache with desire for sleep.
I search, adrift, through worlds
Seeking sleep.
I cast my nets far,
And capture stars and ride the orbits
Of planets, and swim through space,
Seeking sleep.
Making myself small,
I fall headlong into human time,
And fly through their tiny,
Powerful lives, so full of fury
And so full of grace; I fly,
Seeking sleep.
And then, I reach your bed.
You lie awake, lost to all, lost to me.
Your eyes are full of moonbeams.
I am ensnared. I approach.
You don’t see me. You are elsewhere.
I cannot shake you.
I stand beside you, spellbound.
Dreaming with eyes open,
You lie on your bed, and weave a cosmos,
Expanding galaxies of voiceless dreams
Larger than a cranium, larger than
My cloaked, moon-dark self,
Larger than the edges of all that’s known.
And the threads pull me towards you
Like a lover pulls with the moon with her blood.
I see you, and I desire you,
Weaver of spells, my keeper.
For now I know
Why I didn’t find sleep —
I hadn’t found you.
You spin worlds, and I spin headlong
Into them, spiraling into
Quiet breathing, flow of air and blood,
And you draw me within you.
And I find what I seek: Peace.
And the power of you, your sleepless
Dreaming mind, your clenched griefs
Your love of sleep, and of me,
These pull me, and I, Morpheus, helpless
Like a leaf in a current, zigzag towards
Towards the shore of you,
Seeking dreams in you.
You see me now. Your eyes widen,
Draw me in. I am home in you,
Come to rest at last
In the curtains behind your eyes,
Poet of my sleep,
Dreaming of me.
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