Yesterday I slept twenty hours not meaning to,
but today I read that Koala bears do it every day –
four hours enough for them to play.

Daddy brought stuffed Koalas back
from Vietnam – a mother and her little child.
I wished he’d brought the Daddy, too.

In American History (1950 on), I first learned
of jungle terrain soldiers negotiated in Nam. Ever since,
I’ve been sleeping in a jungle of my own.

When I close these wide-open frog eyes
that seek always something more from green days gone by
(far from land of confusion and this grown-up world),

dreams carry me out to Sea of Maybe, on a flimsy boat
to the girl who might have run naked through every village then
if only I could have played four hours,

if only there was no war and no monsters in the cold and dark
place where I was left behind, if only I had no need for sleep or
this search for a happy ever after to fix the quagmire of my past.