Purple Midnight
From 2001:
In this Purple Midnight the hours swallow
me whole. like the holes they make of stars
in the witching hour.
Maybe it should be called the twitching hour
because I can’t lie still.
shiver me timbers and show me the dark
I wish I could find my slumber.
My eyes rove around like tourists.
they don’t know where they are or what they
want.
They blink themselves wider because
they can’t close
flounder and trout rear up like curious
horses in a copper river and a silver sea.
Conjure me a soul mate, and I’ll conjure
you a soul.The price we pay to sleep at
night is a visit to the dream mole.
We throw ourselves off cliffs, sure we’ll
find the answer, but where is the sleep,
for a lone wanderer, wandering deep,
in this purple midnight.
Also the background to a dance piece performed in 2006 at UC Berkeley and published in Stonecutters 2002 and Poetry.com.
Photo by Margot Stokol. Montreal, Canada. 2008.