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The Sleep Thieves

by Maureen Glaude

"Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep..."

-child's bedtime prayer - 18th century


The sleep thieves
gnaw away
at my hours of repose
these nights.

The culprits crawl out
from the fresh memory
of dark news stories, and
across my soft eiderdown
looming eerily
in the ribbed lighting
from bedroom blinds.

My settling for the night ritual
is to turn off the bedside lamp
turn down the soft clean flannel
and receive the body and mind
for the night.

But how to extinguish...
recent events in this city
that replay uninvited
in one’s brain?

...the curse of knowledge
of the last night’s drive-by-shooting,
savage and premeditated,
the suspects still at large.
...the spray of countless pot shots
marking an habitually peaceful
stretch of residences on Christmas night.

...bullet holes in garage doors and windows,
shown on the televised news
not some CSI Miami or New York episode,
but a true story in my hometown in Canada.

And if rest relieves me from that crime scene
for a brief period, it is only to trade it with
the attempt to shut out another tragedy —
the forty-something man in the east end
who on the same night, worked alone
stretched out on his back
beneath his car on a jack hoist
in his garage,
all the efforts of the project
collapsing along with his life.

I try to restrict my bedtime reading
to upbeat fiction and gentle fare,
avoiding the media offerings.

But the stories permeate easily-
from a bathroom radio
left on and broadcasting the
top of the hour news, or on a television
interruptive break
during the prime time romance movie
or situation comedy.

Later, shifts of position,
a warm glass of milk,
rising to perform
a yogic shoulder stand or cobra
on the mat by the
little stone and glass
calming pond on the hope chest,
all fail to eradicate
the scenes and sounds
in the theater
of my head.

Tonight’s disturbance
is the tale that spread rapidly
of the out of control fire
in an older house
on a street well familiar to me,
and not far away from my
own neighbourhood.

The concept engulfs my consciousness,
licks a threatening tongue over my
forehead, stirring the heart’s
ashes from embers
to searing flames.

Over and over I see
the bewildered expression on
the older woman, stranded
at the wrong end of a fire-infested stairway
to her third floor apartment. The frustrated
firefighters on the opposite end
of that blazing stretch
and helpless to save her.
Long-sufferer of arthritis
of the legs, and living alone,
she was easy prey for the inferno.
Like the structure itself, the type of older,
tall house in which a fire balloons
upward in no time the firefighters words
in the newspaper told me. The same article
described this sole victim only days earlier
telling a neighbour that my Christmas
was lovely, thanks.

I don’t sleep these nights.
The thieves keep doing their
break-and-enters
gnawing greedily, like rats
while the ice rain pelts my windows
and the old structure’s exterior walls
pop and explode
in revolt against the changing
climate.

I shift, toss, turn,
(but mostly I pray)as
"I lay me
down to sleep."

03/31/2006

Author's Note: A draft. Suggestions are welcome. I know I have significant editing to do still.

Posted on 03/31/2006
Copyright © 2024 Maureen Glaude

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Chris Sorrenti on 03/31/06 at 07:14 PM

Amen Maureen. I can sooo relate to this. I seldom sleep the whole night through, except when I give in to Lady Lorazepam. And you're right...the steady stream of horror on the news adds new meaning to the word "press." I'm not familiar with the drive by shooting; but thanks for the warning. As for critiquing, the style is perfect for the subject in my opinion, and flows well. I might be mistaken, but the word "and" doesn't sound right in the second line of the preamble, "now I lay me down to sleep."

Posted by Gregory O'Neill on 03/31/06 at 08:59 PM

Enjoy your life more....turn off the news! Honestly, you are right here, Maureen. The news is pretty much inescapable, and inevitably bad. Thanks for the read. Nice work.

Posted by Quentin S Clingerman on 04/05/06 at 01:01 AM

The poem is quite good as it stands. Effective use of symbolism and narrative. It is true one must do something to protect ones mind from those events which are so threatening to one's feeling of security. Praying is certainly a good choice.

Posted by Christel Crews on 04/05/06 at 07:55 PM

you know, i had to stop watching the news at night a few months ago because of similar issues... this piece is well written... good flow and very expressive

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