Steve Mueske

Sleep

            for John Ashbery
 
That there was, above all, a key
that fit. That the door was a door
that could be shut
 
against the night & all its eyes. That the road
beyond the curve exists.

That inside the box is a story.
That waking is sometimes a form
of dying, & dying
 
the knowledge that winter is transitive.
That the heart is a dream of return.
 
That in my hand is a fistful
of buttons. That the river has its own
gravity. That after
 
trying seasons, angels lay down
their wings & sleep in the earth.


--
Steven Mueske is an electronic musician and the author of a chapbook and two books of poetry. His poems have appeared recently in The Iowa Review, Water-Stone Review, Poet Lore, The American Poetry Review, Typo Magazine, Redactions, Radar Poetry, Verse Daily, and elsewhere.