Sleep

 

Melt in slowly, like

cold butter into toast. Or suddenly,

like rain into a smoky black sea.  

 

Detune and let a snowy static overcome.

 

Shake any polaroids back

to their original beige wash.

 

Stop asking “am I gone yet?”

for that question answers itself.

 

Remember, it is and isn’t

like surfing a standing wave,

like dragging a stick across a fence

and calling it music.

 

When it won’t come easy,

the only ways in are weird.

 

You must simultaneously hood

and unhood the falcon.

 

Jump rope without jumping.

 

Not just hear the coyote’s lonely howl

but become it.

 

Gotta let go. Let it all go.

The letting go, too.

 

A drawn arrow’s fletching

is tickling your cheek

and then it isn’t.

 

Be like those goats we saw the other morning,

the county goats by the highway,

dozens of em, hauled there

in a white iron trailer,

hungry, leashless, together,

to wander purposefully through predawn mists

as they chew that scruffy plot of county land clean