“Death has come here on holiday…”

From Minneapolis in January
by Michael Bazzett

We live in the numbness
of an occupied city
where every story has another
story curled inside its labyrinth—

and when Sleep reads
to you at bedtime, it is
the nested one that comes
slinking out to sew you,

with tiny stitches and
scarlet thread, to the mattress.
It is a story that believes itself
to be permanent (an odd word,

because nothing is),
a story that is somehow
made of white light
bent and glaring to illuminate

what happened, then tell you
it did not happen. Dawn
slowly washes every face 
sleeping in the pale grey

mop-water of its light.
Yet nobody awakens
and we cannot say why.
The answer is simple. Death

has come here on holiday
from the coast, yet its cousin
Sleep remains in charge.
Our nightmare is the waking.

This poem by Michael Bazzett was shared by Padraig O’ Tuama in his recent substack Poetry Unbound. Bazzett lives in Minneapolis and teaches high school English. In recent years he has received many awards for his poetry. Pa’draig concludes his remarks about the poem by writing “Bazzett’s poem does not provide a solution, but I read two imperatives in it: Live. And Awaken” Please pause and ponder and in the midst of these unreal real times it might be good to pray!

Prayer:
Lord God,
there are times when my prayers
cannot find words. This is such a time so
please listen
to the sound
of my silence. Hear the grief and
the sorrow in my unbroken silence. See the shape of my
unspoken words. My sorrow is not
for self but for all, my sorrow is not for one
place but for all places, not for one
people, but for all people.
Lord God,
there are times when your still
small voice is all that we need, like a fresh breeze
upon our face. May we feel this breeze today and in the
silence may hope be born anew within us and all
around us. Amen.