Light Sleeper

A new poem by Richard Deming

October 18, 2017  By Richard Deming
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Light Sleeper

 

And to say with one breath
everything is (isn’t it) possible is
to give into an optimism hard not
to be suspicious of. Yet, people
like that sort of thing. Needful things
pile in the corner. They begin to sway. On a rainy,
humid night, the air thickened
with salt, and, vaguely, burning
leaves, my hand curves across
her spine. She sleeps. I will sleep.
I’ll wish that description could become
promise. That would do.
This small house stands by the ocean.
No one will come to visit.
The moon, when it comes, faces elsewhere.




Richard Deming
Richard Deming
Richard Deming’s collections of poems are Let’s Not Call It Consequence and Day For Night. He is also the author of Listening on All Sides: Towards an Emersonian Ethics of Reading. In 2012, he was awarded the Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin. He is currently Director of Creative Writing at Yale University.




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