Sleeping Lucy

too stoned to stay up for Night Beat
or hallucinate a Magritte: Night Heat

deep country sleep      shelf self-chosen
all around bird sound blows in

one year      comes out non-smother
yeasty two-hill vista           breasty earth brother

in the ground           huge bent nails
implements of long-gone giants       scavenger hunt trails

first thing this AM hand-trained some bean vines
childhood sidewalks     scratchy film’s shifting lines

passive-aggressive silence of heat lightning (mystery mesh)
energy deafness        frightening probe: one’s own LSD putty flesh

so I sneak off sometimes and inhale convenience food bin air
no nude skin there

this big being (inches away) I refer to as “weather”
we live together

last night a drizzle flicked drops on me in bed
fragments of northern sky in my head

Credit

Poems by Kenward Elmslie are used by permission of The Estate of Kenward Elmslie.