Sleepless Ghazal

If coffee has no effect, neither has milk or tea.
Dense fog curls outside the window, mimicking sleep.

In childhood, recurring dreams of flight across
billowing sheets of white, harbors of sleep.

In the early hours, your footfalls down
the hall rouse me from watchful sleep.

My bed is lumpy with hidden vegetables,
the mattress striped with wires: elusive sleep.

Wild silences of deep solitude, trapdoors
amid the roots: for tumbling headlong into sleep.

I once had a rusted key to a garden where
arms carved me makeshift rooms for sleep.

The tremor starts along the foot, a fright
like falling into the sudden depth preceding sleep.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.