Before slumber repose

Meditation

The focus of the eyes required
Amid the immediacy of the moment
Begans to blur now, its necessity
And its productive attention wanes.

Just moments ago the “busy-ness” of the day held sway,
What with the children to usher and to clock
And with the household quieted and errands run and
Ledgers balanced and quotas met and exceeded.

The trip home of congested lanes of traffic
And the queue of freeway ramps and
Grocery store check out counters
Has now quickened and resolved.

The day already is starting to recede
Though still immediate, becoming now
Without regret the immediate past.

Already the lull of concern for the morrow:
The homework which is due,
The supplies running low,
The likelihood of the uncalendared
And the urgent demands of bosses or customers
That will just have to be addressed!

The concern too of whether
We will be needed or not,
Whether we will be put to our best use or
Put to the challenge.

Have we left undone that which
Will permit tomorrow to go as planned?

Across the city and the burbs
At some point the teenagers
And grandchildren are all thumbs
And the vibrations of day settle beneath a hum
And the intimations of what the morrow
Will bring must come to a stop.

So I close my eyes now
And enjoy that stilling within
That is the necessary first rest
Before sleep and its hoped for sweet dreams,
Its restorative oblivion that can,
I want to believe, restore me
And before the dawn of day.

I picture myself on a swing
Atop a prairie hillock with a view
Across green hills of trees and grassy meadows.

I hear a tolling of a distant bell
Lessening, resolving in the twilight,
The twilight of a rosy sunset
That fades to the first star,
The first star of evening.

From the wooden bench of the swing,
I follow the taut line of its ropes
Up into the canopy of this old oak
And between its leaves, I notice
Sirius, brightest of stars, the Dog Star,
For it’s now high summer,
And the Earth gives off its warmth
Just as a distant lake swells
Sending its breeze onshore
Bringing on the cool that rewards
All who have endured the heat of day.

Now I stand up and out of my pant pocket
I draw a ball of string my child
Insist I keep and for just such a moment
As this one.

I take that ball of string
And I roll it from one palm
Into the other and than back again.

Examining the ball, I find
The loose end of its strand
And holding it tight in my left hand,
I throw the ball of string up into the sky
Just as very far as I can.

Just enough light to see
The string unraveled slackened
As it settles down and into
The meadow below me.

With my left hand and then
My right I start to tug the string,
To reel it in, but
It’s held fast in the briars and brambles.

Without realizing it at first,
I am descending the hillock
Drawn into the dampening tall grass
Coiling the string as I go
Into its expanding ball,
As I head down, down, down into the meadow,
Into the long good night,
The good night of a child
Readied for sleep, who only
Needed to reconnect with
The deep, deep, deep, . . .
Reality of Sleep.

God, let go of grandeur,
Must know such repose!


From A Few Memories Before Sleep
by Richard J. (Rick) Hilber.
© 2014 by Richard J. (Rick) Hilber. All rights reserved.

Lake Lida in the Dark of a Moonless Night

Lake Lida in the Dark of a Moonless Night

You’ve been careful to go off by yourself
Up to Sylvan Pond, hoping for clear night sky.
Your little sister Jodie comes running out to you.
She wants to know if you have seen glow bugs.
Her flashlight lens is covered in red cellophane and
She is careful to keep it pointed at the ground.
You tell her as if with the back of the hand:
“It’s too late in the summer for bioluminescence.”
She says to you that you do not know it all -- at all!
There’s always next year you tell her and
You remember it’s been four years
Since you last saw fireflies and
Have told her every year since
That she maybe one day would be so lucky
As to have seen lightening bugs too.
If you ask, she saw fireflies that night.
All I remember is what I went out to see:
The night sky with the Milky Way
Smudged across the southern sky
And to see star light off the pond.

From A Few Memories Before Sleep
by Richard J. (Rick) Hilber.
© 2014 by Richard J. (Rick) Hilber. All rights reserved.