Sleeping

Sleeping beside you
I dreamt I woke beside you,
waking beside you I thought
I was dreaming.

Have you ever slept beside the ocean?
There is the sound of the waves and the wind
turning across the sea's meniscus,
something even lady moon couldn't work out.

And the landscape of the ocean
is within you, sparkling, contented
with the shifts and pulls of the tide,
the innocence of any flesh sleeping

needing not protection but memory
of something recently gone,
the world a larger place now
safe for the moment.

In what mind you are
I could not rightly say,
but knowing there is love
that cancels demons

you are safe and I can turn
towards you, sleep well beside you,
dreams fallen into morning
where they can do no harm,

where the whole evidence
of romance waits, time
having shifted in seconds
rather than hours here, my love, here.

Now waking beside you I am dreaming,
dreaming of such wakings that fetch warmth
and the certainty of a love just started,
this the cry of the isolate just started,
this the cry of the isolate who has found

the last moment in which to mark
his luck, coming as it does from
the heavens above as I wait now,
your face made up, your sunday best

where I can watch a procession
of miracles, the certainty
of love  just started now, this moment,
our lives suddenly begun

whilst I am to all love's season woken.

John Cornwall

If you've any comments on this poem, John Cornwall would be pleased to hear from you.