Tag: sleep

The Fall of the Leaf

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 octleaves10155
morningleaf
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
         Laid on it for a covering,
         And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
         Bound up at length for harvesting,
         And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
~Dante Gabriel Rossetti from “Autumn Song”
Now with darkness draping our morning commute
and darkness enveloping our return home,
we too are like the settling of the falling leaves:
our hearts of grief in the letting go,
our souls bound up dried for harvest.
We sing out loud,
in colors that glow in the dark,
while autumn moves us closer to our sleep.
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A Domestication of Daisies

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daisybuds

spiderdrizzle

Time is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider
on the dining-room window has fallen asleep
among complexities as I will once

the doors are bolted and the keys tested
and the switch turned up of the kitchen light
which made outside in the back garden

an electric room-a domestication
of closed daisies, an architecture
instant and improbable.
~Eavan Boland from “Nocturne”

As each day blurs so quickly into the next,
I try to lock it up, throw away the key,
preserve them on a shelf like so many jars of fruit
to sample when I’m starving to remember.

Each night suspends
as I turn out the light,
a moment of sighs and murmurs
in gratitude for another day
brief as a daisy
that fades away.

daisybud

daisysun

photo by Josh Scholten

One Hundred Flowers Open

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roseunfurl

The children have gone to bed.
We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly
behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing
warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together
and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet,
the forgiveness of that sleep.

Then the one small cry:
one strike of the match-head of sound:
one child’s voice:
and the hundred names of love are lit
as we rise and walk down the hall.

One hundred nights we wake like this,
wake out of our nowhere
to kneel by small beds in darkness.
One hundred flowers open in our hands,
a name for love written in each one.
~Annie Lighthart “The Hundred Names of Love”

 

Each night of each child wakening,
each moment of rocking them in the dark,
lulling them back to the soft velvet of sleep,
I feel my budding love
unfurling in fragrance
of blossomed fullness, opening until there is no inner spiral left,
and each petal drops, grateful.

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When the Heart Slows

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thornberry

fallenapple

 

 
…bears binge on blackberries and apples,  
to satisfy the sweet hunger
that consumes them.  Just like us  
they know the day must come when   
the heart slows, when to take one   
more step would mean the end of things   
as they should be.  Sleep is a drug;   
dreams its succor.  How better to drift   
toward another world but with leaves   
falling, their warmth draping us,   
our stomachs full and fat with summer?
~Todd Davis  from “Sleep”
 
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My Dripping Sleep

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rainyclothesline3

rainygrass

 

I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry,
thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry.
Then I looked at the window and thought:
Why, yes, it’s just the rain, the rain, always the rain,
and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.
~Ray Bradbury

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rainyweeds

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A Canticle for Advent: The World is Sleeping

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nextdoor

Still, still, still,
One can hear the falling snow.
For all is hushed,
The world is sleeping,
Holy Star its vigil keeping.
Still, still, still,
One can hear the falling snow.

Sleep, sleep, sleep,
‘Tis the eve of our Saviour’s birth.
The night is peaceful all around you,
Close your eyes,
Let sleep surround you.
Sleep, sleep, sleep,
‘Tis the eve of our Saviour’s birth.

Dream, dream, dream,
Of the joyous day to come.
While guardian angels without number,
Watch you as you sweetly slumber.
Dream, dream, dream,
Of the joyous day to come.
~Austrian carol

51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
1 Corinthians 15: 51-52

It will be a joyous day of which we only dream in our current slumber.  We will be changed, awakened from our stillness and sleep– not a mere disguising cover of snow,  but forever cleansed and purified.

Dreaming Wide-Open

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photo by Kate Steensma
photo by Kate Steensma

The cattle crouched round them in soft shadowy clumps, placidly munching, and dreaming with wide-open eyes. The narrow zone of colour created by the firelight was like the planet Earth – a little freak of brightness in a universe of impenetrable shadows.
~Hope Mirrlees

Sometimes I feel I am dreaming awake with wide-open eyes.  There is a slow motion quality to time as it flows from one hour to the next to the next.  Everything becomes more vivid as in a dream — the sounds of birds, the smell of the farm, the depth of the greens in the landscape, the taste of fresh plums, the intensity of every breath, the reason for being.

The rest of time, in its rush and blur,  can feel like sleepwalking,  my eyes open but unseeing.  I stumble through life’s shadows, the path indiscernible, my future uncertain, my purpose illusive.

Wake me to dream some more.    I want to chew on it again and again, savoring.

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Perchance to Dream

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-1
A kitty we met in Scotland who was willing to share the sun room

I count it as a certainty that in paradise, everyone naps. 
~Tom Hodgkinson

I believe the world would be a better place if we could stop in the middle of the day and just rest our eyes for awhile — to look at the inside of our eyelids for a few minutes, to pause, to pray, to purr…

perchance to dream.   Aye, there’s the rub.

We just might wake and see things differently.

 

A slight breeze stirs tree branches
so shadow patterns play on the curtains
like candlelight in a drafty room.

The harvest is over, corn
stubble and weeds in the field. The sky is

soft blue, a few clouds in the distance.

I will close my eyes, nap for
a while. Perhaps when I wake all will seem
the same. Sleep plays tricks in many ways.
~Matthew Spereng – “Late August, Lying Down to Nap at Noon”

Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow. 
~George F. Will

Good Medicine

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

A good night sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine.
~Ray Bradbury

If there is anything I’ve learned in 35 years of my medical career, it’s that I still must “practice” my art every day.  As much as we physicians emphasize the science of what we do, utilizing “evidence based” decisions, there are still days when a fair amount of educated guessing and a gut feeling is based on my past experience, along with my best hunch.  Many patients don’t arrive with classic cook book symptoms that fit the standardized diagnostic and treatment algorithms so the nuances of their stories require interpretation, discernment and flexibility.    I appreciate a surprise once in awhile that makes me look at a patient in a new or unexpected way and teaches me something I didn’t know before.   It keeps me coming back for more, to figure out the mystery and dig a little deeper.

I’ve also learned that not all medicine comes in pills or injections.  This isn’t really news to anyone, but our modern society is determined to seek better living through chemistry, the more expensive and newer the better, whether prescribed or not.  Chemicals have their place, but they also can cause havoc.  It is startling to see medication lists topping a dozen different daily pills.  Some are life-saving.  Many are just plain unnecessary.

How many sleep without the aid of pill or weed or alcohol?  Fewer and fewer.  Poor sleep is one of the sad consequences of our modern age of too much artificial light, too much entertainment keeping us up late, and not enough physical work to exhaust our bodies enough to match our frazzled and fatigued brains.

How many of us allow ourselves a good cry when we feel it welling up?  It could be a sentimental moment–a song that brings back bittersweet memories, a commercial that touches just the right chord of feeling and connection.  It may be a moment of frustration and anger when nothing seems to go right.  It could be the pain of physical illness or injury or the stress of emotional turmoil.  Or just maybe there is weeping when everything is absolutely perfect and there cannot be another moment just like it, so it is tough to let it go unchristened by tears of joy.

And without a doubt, the healing qualities of chocolate are unquestioned by this doctor, however it may be consumed.  It can fix most everything that ails a person. at least for an hour or two.

It doesn’t take an M.D. degree to know the best medicine.  It just takes a degree of common sense.
Time for bed and time to turn off the light.  A good bawl and chocolate will wait for another night.

 

Wiping the Slate Clean

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photo by Josh Scholten

“Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day’s chalking.”
~Frederich Buechner

And tomorrow
move forward
to leave a mark on a new day
after night’s erasing rest.

No matter what took place the day before,
no matter the misgivings,
no matter what should have been left unsaid,
no matter how hard the heart,
there is another day to make it right.

Forgiveness finds a foothold in the dark,
when eyelids close,
thoughts quietly open,
voices hush in prayers
of praise, petition and gratitude.

And so now
sleep on it
knowing his grace
abounds in blameless dreams.

Morning will come
awash in new light,
another chance
freely given.