Image: Midnight Moon ~ Kalilo
Midnight:
A ticking clock
The only sound
Filling the eerie darkness
The night sky sparkles:
The light of a thousand stars,
Shining forever
Lying in silence
Memories long forgotten
Playing on my mind
Another restless night
Counting sheep
Seeing your face:
Sleep will not come
Rain, falling slowly,
Running down my window pane
Like tears from heaven
A ray of moonlight
Falling across my pillow:
Reminds me of you
Tossing and turning
In an empty bed:
Will I always be
Alone?
The sound of silence:
A tap’s steady drip
Slowly driving me
Insane
Thinking about God
In the middle of the night:
I have no answers
Writer’s block
Bane of my very existence:
The blank page
Never lies
Staring at shadows
Flickering on the wall:
My nightmares
Made real
An orange sunrise
Greeted by a sparrow’s song:
A new day begins
Another morning
Life rising with the new sun:
Finally at rest
Licenced under a Creative Commons Licence
I’ve been working on this poem for quite a while now. Originally I started it back in September as a different kind of poem, more of a traditional sonnet, but I just couldn’t get it to work. I went back to it about a month ago and turned it into this instead.
I’ve had insomnia for a couple of years now and that’s what originally inspired the poem. Quite often I’m still awake around sunrise or later and one of the things I often think about while I’m awake is how the night seems to have a life of its own. The softest sounds – a ticking clock, a dripping tap, the wind rattling the windows – suddenly sound so loud and the shadows play tricks on your mind. There’s something beautiful about the stillness of the night as well though and that’s what I wanted to try to capture, that feeling of just… listening.
It’s not really meant to be a poem as much as a collection of thoughts and feelings and reading it now I’m quite happy with how it turned out. It’s different to the poem I set out to write but I think it works quite well as haiku in the end… the brevity suits it and I like that it’s a little more open than some of my other poetry as well.
I hope you enjoyed it. I’m through the worst of my writer’s block now as well so I should be starting to post more regularly again. I’ll have a Christmas post up tomorrow. — CJ.