The smallest hours, between one and three am,

I hold my vigil here as a guardsman might do,

In far away places, peering out at an unfamiliar

Landscape fraught with unknown things.

Ah but I know the confines of this room quite well,

Though my thoughts are not always so easy to navigate,

And it is there that I post my guard, as I walk among

Them, a stranger even to myself on rough terrain.

Arm across a sleepless brow, eyes closed against

The familiar, shallow breaths marking time above

The ticking of a clock I cannot see, looking inward

At random recollections that move like sudden dancers.

Here, the watches of the night, feeling the weight of

Moonbeams as they explore my face and hair through

Half-lidded blinds that conceal six panes of glass laced

With intricate patterns of ice above a restless bed.

There, as I stand indecisive on an intangible borderline,

A marker few seldom know they have crossed, where

Thoughts become dreams, neither awake nor asleep, I

Do my balancing act, wondering which way I’ll fall.

END

“Vigil”