The Sandman
By John Herlihy

Infants, children, adults and even our gravest elders,
All lay down to sleep at end of day to abandon the land of revelers,
Lay aside their earthly concerns to enter a well most deep,
Drifting nightly into a neverland without a care for this world,
A sleep so real it has the mark of death and the imprint of forever.

People lay in bed expectantly wondering what will happen next.
Will they ever drift away or just lay awake feeling perplexed?
The mind continues to spin a web of intrigue and mixed emotions,
Who can identify the moment when the gate of sleep suddenly opens,
Drawing us through an invisible shield into the depths of forgetful oceans.

The sandman quietly opens a door in the room’s darkened shadows,
Creating a silky fabric of moon and starlight against the night’s nativity.
Here comes our mythical guide, a sleepless fellow full of gentility,
Treading softly across the shiny waxed floorboards in woolen socks,
Not to interrupt hopeful sleepers counting seconds on house clocks.

He creeps up behind the sleepers and blows softly upon their necks,
As their eyes begin to flutter and their heads begin to droop.
They are losing consciousness, as in falling, as in dying;
The sands of sleep fall like stardust across the light of the eyes,
Creating a film of dreams that makes the sleeper ready for surprise.

The sleepers don’t know that they have left this world behind.
In losing consciousness, they have lost all sense of presence and time.
There is no present, no past, and no future preserved in brine.
Time’s arrow has come to a standstill and is holding fast.
The world has stopped turning and for now the die is cast.

One minute you lie awake counting tree branches on the wall;
The next minute your petals close for the night obeying Nature’s call.
The soul slips away from the body, holding tight the astral thread,
Free falling into a sea of sparkling stars in the Milky Way instead,
Falling and more falling until there is no further place to descend.

Then abruptly I awaken, drawn out of an unearthly, ethereal mist,
Shedding the veil of death as the soul returns home at the hour of dawn,
Back into the body that has lain unconscious and supine all night long.
I am suddenly awakened; what happened; I see early morning dew;
A moment ago it was midnight in Michigan, in the city of Kalamazoo.