Your sleep is so profound
This room seems a recess
Awaiting consciousness.
Gauze curtains, drawn around
The postered bed, confute
Each waking attribute —
Volition, movement, sound.
Outside, though, chilly light
Shivers a puddle's coil
Of iridescent oil;
Windows, sun-struck, ignite;
Doves strut along the edge
Of roof- and terrace-ledge
And drop off into flight.
And soon enough you'll rise.
Long-gowned and self-aware,
Brushing life through your hair,
You'll notice with surprise
The way your glass displays,
Twin-miniatured, your face
In your reflective eyes.
Goddess, it's you in whom
Our clear hearts joy and chafe.
Awaken, then. Vouchsafe
Ideas to resume.
Draw back the drapes: let this
Quick muffled emphasis
Flood light across the room.
Aurora by Timothy Steele | Garden Lavender Poetry Reed Diffuser Set
Timothy Steele has published four collections of verse: Uncertainties and Rest (1979); Sapphics Against Anger and Other Poems (1986); The Color Wheel (1994); and Toward the Winter Solstice (2006). The first two of these have been re-issued as a joint volume, Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970-1986. Steele has published as well two books about poetry: Missing Measures (1990) and All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing (1999), and he has edited The Poems of J. V. Cunningham (1997).
