Early to Bed

Sometimes, I feel like the green plant in the winter window. Outside, the season is all wrong. It’s gray and white, not sunny and bright green – yet I struggle to show my summer best greenery in full view of winter’s fury and within ear-shot of its frozen roar. I want to sleep, because most plants want to sleep the long sleep of winter’s cold dream, but the touch of warmth and the occasional summer sun encourages life, if not growth. The stress of seasonal change will sometimes produce just stress and sometimes will cause one to bloom – much as the persistent prompting of my muse will prop my eyelids open and force another verse or two to bloom in the dark and the snow…

Here I am, abed – but not asleep – and this is my poem…

Mick

Early to Bed

Because my mind was in a sorry state,
I thought that I would go to bed early -
Instead of staying up so very late,
And writing introspective poetry.
I considered the coming of the dawn,
But I didn’t want to get off the track.
Instead, I pondered darkness with a yawn,
I stretched a mile, and I had to walk back
Till I found my way to our quiet room -
With fuzzy eyes and blurry, tired sight -
And I could not avoid the poet's doom…
I'm destined to write, even late at night.
I got the new poem out of my head,
But I had to write poetry…abed.


Mick McKellar
November 2007