Insomnia
The almost disturbing scent
of peonies presses through the
screens,
and I know without looking how
those heavy white heads lean
down
under the moon’s light. A
cricket chafes
and pauses, chafes and pauses,
as if distracted or preoccupied.
When I open my eyes to document
my sleeplessness by the clock, a
point
of greenish light pulses near
the ceiling.
A firefly… In childhood I ran
out
at dusk, a jar in one hand, lid
pierced with airholes in the
other,
getting soaked to the knees
in the long wet grass.
The light moves unsteadily, like
someone
whose balance is uncertain after
traveling
many hours, coming a long way.
Get up. Get up and let it out.
But I leave it hovering
overhead, in case
it’s my father, come back from
the dead
to ask, “Why are you still
awake? You can
put grass in their jar in the
morning,”
Jane Kenyon
Kenyon, Jane. “Insomnia.” Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Greywolf Press,
1996. p.138.
