David J Bauman

When a man is left to sleep
sleep when he feels his appetite
for rest wrestle from himself that greater
need to lay awake

Then he will begin to really think-
think not about what is
nor what is not
but allow sleep to let his body reach

For the untold feeling of the grass
pressed beneath it; the soil molding
his back and pups looping just so
in the tumble of their play

All of this done under a wide dome
of sky and the river moving it
towards the unseen sea that he
can taste-

This is what he is not fitted for
in those temples to his intelligence
whose stones are power washed
and you walk in upon buffed marble

Let that marble speak as he sleeps
flooring a palace hilled beyond
the looming green of a half dome
of grass, filling with skyward legs

The sky…