UNKNOWN BELOVED

The canopy is singing.

Sloths in sleep look like the dreaming

dead. Awake little different

under eyelashes stalwart as sapodillas,

fringed as palms. If to attain true mastery

ten thousand hours are required, yes.

If it is the habit of geniuses to nap,

yes. If the highly successful sleep

fewer than four hours per night,

the inverse. If expert survivalists sleep

while maintaining partial consciousness,

the reverse. But we sleep fitful in a bed

at the average, appointed intervals

and under it we keep only some number

of heaped-up words. What is our dreaming

good for, it is reasonable to wonder,

in what are we expert? A certain fumbling

in the hours when we make good

habitats for other organisms, which is

where first we recognized each other.