Night In
A Stream of Consciousness Poem
That's all you asked
That's all it took
The light, the tea, the book, the nook
And you, with no fresh project tasked
Free as any living form with the kind of mind
That reads, for that is no mean feat
To make a world of small marks on a sheet
To envy characters no more real than dreams
In which the recipe for all of your neuroses
Must lie hidden like the subterranean rhizome
That whispers under the forest's moist loam
Until each mushroom is a word it speaks
Look at the actual book you've got!
The chair is firm but kind; the tea is hot
Raskolnikov is plotting the old woman's bloody doom
Quixote rubs the dust and grime from Rocinante's saddle
Ishtar prepares to undo Gilgamesh and Enkidu
Li Po befriends the old green mountain's soul
Ivan Ilyich hurts himself as he decorates his drawing room
Gregor Samsa wakes an insect, worried he'll be late
Emily's brain becomes a sponge that drinks oceans alive
All for you
Like the tea the sun taught all its shining secrets
So that it could rise and rustle into robust rooibos
Die and dry and bathe in what you heated
Surrender its salutary spirit to the bath
Tune your nerves with caffeine's dexterity
Swell your pupils to match the inky marks
Harboring whole lives and minds and nations
Desperate to be decoded by your sweet sentience
An ancient rite, made fresh and vital every time
Eyes move across a silent sentence's smooth surface
The bow that makes the taught string of syllables
Eloquent and alive
Your eyes, the most public parts of your brain
Touching the traces left by extinct genius
Necromancer of the novel, you will restore life
Joy and pain and doubt and lust and angst
Every note in the symphony a self sings to itself
To paper people, things, places, accidents, miracles
Hearts and loins and cruel looks and raw rumors
Guns and germs and swords and spells and dinner parties
While the whole machine of night ticks
You have your light and your book and your tea and your nook
The tools to sew a universe of lives
And try each on
To dance, or fight, or sit and think in
To become another and yourself again
Nothing is more beautiful
Than you are
Reading
About the Creator
D. J. Reddall
I write because my time is limited and my imagination is not.
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Comments (4)
Nice job - I especially loved the ending!! Nothing is as beautiful….
Fantastic! This is one of my new favorites. I loved the imagery and descriptions. I hope that I do some of this in my own writing ❤️
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Lovely! Nothing better than a night in reading. Each line develops the awe and desire so well. Great work!
Thank you for sharing your stream of thought