Night – August 9-10

Night may not bring sleep but it does leave the mind open to thoughts. 

Here are three: 

One

It’s night again. She cannot sleep. She reaches for one of the books on the left side of the bed where there should have been a companion in living flesh and blood but whose place has long been taken by her  books. She knows which one she wants, can tell by the feel of it, by its size, by the smoothness of the cover or whether it is slender and tall or whether it is stubby and thick, for she knows already what it will tell her. She knows what books they are: Anne Michaels “Held” with the tree trunks silhouetted against the snow and inside the story of a young soldier who became a photographer, Elizabeth Strout and her “Burgess Boys”.  She thinks that she has known more than one who was like Jim Burgess, a good person but basically an egoist and narcissist. Since yesterday there are also the poems by Hass, poet laureate. She doesn’t remember buying the book or reading it. Now her hand slides over the smooth cover with its brilliant bird and flowers. The words on the pages range from a description of a country field to the layers of time captured in shale and tuff. His poems make one think as one tries to decipher what he is telling you. There are also two detective stories by Camilleri, just to help her pass the time. She thinks that If it were her lover at her side, he would be whispering to her in the dark, telling her of his day and perhaps what she must or must not do as she reaches out and caresses his face. Or perhaps he is offering new ideas, new words, to use as she wishes. Or if it were a dog or cat, their warm body pressed against hers would tell her they were glad to share her bed. Sleep will come, but only with the light of day.

 Two

You wrote about the cucumber and the translucent opal green of its flesh, shielded from the world by its dark green casing. The cucumber, already known to the Romans. The flesh is crisp as you taste its freshness, espoused with the tomatoes in your salad, red like the garnets on your mother’s starry necklace. The tomatoes though here in Europe go back to the Renaissance and the first ones to come from the New World were golden in color, not that deepest shade of red.

 Three

You ask me when I am lying in bed on my back, waiting for sleep, not to fold my hands together on my breast, the way they put them to hold a rosary when the owner has crossed the border into eternal sleep. Tell me, then, what should I do with my hands when I wait for the night to give me its blessing?