Timor Mortis

Borne into darkness on the ship of his bed,

he whispers sleepily that brown is night's name,

not black; that death, hiding, waits for him in rest,

as again and again he breaks from sleep's hold

and cries in terror: behind the bright screen

of his brow he finds the spreading figure.

Why should he think that death is the figure?

This frightened ten-year-old in his narrow bed

tucked under the farmhouse eaves, a thick screen

between himself and what the daylight names

as whole and safe: why should misgivings hold,

when his nighttime right is a loosening rest?

He feels for his plaid blanket, wads the rest -

as truck, bear, and book clump, a human figure

under the rumpling covers, a ship's hold

of edged ransom dispersed throughout his bed,

this cargo bearing his cares, his naming,

his tickets for return, while sleep on guard screens

the terrible movies of his fear. A screen

of chases and bad falls, thief of his rest-

nightly, fetters clap him with the wrong name,

nightly steal futurity from the small figure

breathlessly pinned on the blade of his bed,

understanding what time does not withhold.

Now that the adult sits with me, the hold

of his future closer, the computer screen

squared above the luggage clumped on the guest bed;

I know much less of his thoughts on final rest:

the grown man slender and nervous, the figure

he cuts willfully far from his childhood name.

As if we had had full power to name.

Thinking that a child was something to hold.

At the wall, or the floor's four-sided figure,

or in the window, the grids of the screen

blurring his life's geometry, at rest

in the dark planes, the tumbled script of his bed... .

Flushed, spilling with new, prickly names, sleep's screen

still holds erasure, still mothers unrest;

childhood's figure the guest death in this bed.