Our Daily Sleep
 
Give us this day our daily oblivion,
I ask, craning my neck to check
the radio alarm’s been set,
a tripwire tipped at 4:45 in the morning
to “Music Through the Night.”
Still technically night when we get up,
according to somebody’s calculations,
the fork of the newspaper delivery
man’s headlights spearing the pre-dawn
porches across the street,
fog purling up around the trees.
 
Is it oblivion we want, I wonder,
trying to remember the day just passed,
a numb of habit and routine.
Our daily death,
sleep’s been called, between the banks
of the river of forgetfulness, drifting.
 
And yet this rest is welcome,
redemptive, I think,
watching my wife undress.
This may not be where dreams come true,
but it’s where they come.

  J.C. Rammelkamp

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  J.C. Rammelcamp   would be pleased to hear them