Lay me down on mocha velour
& pull the cage up around me,
the cashmere, the grey & the gray,
the small grunting cries.
Funny how some textiles don’t
conduct the cold.
Funny how stars & glass let in the ice.
Funny how sleep begets sleep,
how night is something to be mixed up,
to be mixed in a vat of velvet
or cobalt or silverleaf.
I am learning to sleep, says the sheep,
& my sleep has three rooms,
each a mess and with a hidden baby.
Impossible to locate an idea
with the Big Dipper swishing around
and around in all that inky soup.