Meditation as Help for Insomnia Due to Pain/Anxiety

…will be the topic of my guest post that will go up on Thursday at Jan Lundy’s Awake is Good. Jan, the author of Your Truest Self: Embracing the Woman You Are Meant to Be, is doing a series of posts about meditation.


Still Life

Into that kitchen, electric with the clock’s ticking,
I came at 4 AM
And found nothing but the dirty cup,
The empty table and the vacant seat,
All immovable, all silent,
As silent and immovable as objects ever were.

I left that empty place.
Back up the stairs I climbed
To my room.
Inside its black space I flipped a switch
And stood starkly in the light
That showed the radiator grinning stupidly,
The sheets crumpled agitatedly,
The decrepit Venetian blinds
Yellowed and dented.
The thin staccato tapping of the clock
Penetrated to the space behind my eyes,
Alerting me.
I directed sleepless senses to the stain on the floor
Near the bed
Where the turtle was torn to tiny green shreds
By the cat
And the smell had sickened me.
I saw that even that spot had grown cold and narrow,
As narrow and cold as the shoulders of my chair.

(Only thing I ever wrote for a creative writing class that turned out OK! Back in 1978, my senior year of college.)