This is called "Away."
It's a poem about staying up all night.
Something I've never done.
No, I've done it, but I've never written a poem.
After you stayed up all night, it's
not the thing you want to do.
What you want to do is go to bed.
"Away."
"One summer night, I could not sleep and went outside.
I stood awhile in the calm, the somber air.
The musk of trees swept over me.
The tall closets of my spirit opened.
Things fell away.
Down into nothing went the dark windows, the stone flowers,
the wasted breath.
Whatever I carried with me over the years,
it seemed like hours, I stood watching my life fall
into the dark.
And then I lay down, and the grass bent over me.
And the immense wind of summer began billowing near.
For hours I lay, perfectly still.
I could not remember the sound of winter,
I could not remember the sound that wished to be winter.
I thought of the earthworm turning among roots.
The owl's eyes glowing beneath his lids.
The mouse's bones glittering secretly under his skin.
I looked up into the trees, the green enormous rooms of leaves
swayed in the stylist wake of the wind,
and shown as if each kept an emerald moon within.
I seemed so far from everything, so far from sleep.
The lawn shivered around me like water.
All night I wondered what lay beyond.
I could not imagine a dreamless deep or a light
that would not break.
I turned and turned in the smoke of my skin.
I floated among the bones of heaven.
All night I wondered where would it end.
Some hidden birds had begun their singing.
The morning yellows filled the sky.
A few leaves spun over the lawn.
Nothing had changed.
I walked back into the house.
And while the sun hooded the roof with light, I lay in bed.
I closed my eyes and did not move all day, all day,
whatever I carried with me over the years
would burn and fall away.
Burned and fall away."