Night Voices and Visions

Our minds at night
continue the path
we have walked during the day.

Our sense may be that
the mind sleeps as our body does,
refreshing and renewing itself.

Alas this isn't quite the way it works.

When first settling into rest
what follows may be Reflections on this Day,
often accompanied by an accounting
and judgments about what went well and what did not.

It's a review written by the mind
sometimes focused on particulars,
other times offering a more general take away.

How we move on to letting go the thoughts
to allow sleep the room it needs
depends much on our emotional attachment 
to such evaluations.

Sleep comes and sleep goes.
At times awakening occurs several hours later
maybe for some physical sensation that interferes 
or perhaps the ending of a dream.

Whatever causes the shift back to conscious sensing
the return to sleep may take a pause,
stirring the Midnight Voice to alertness
and then it's off and running.

This is the voice that targets
our most vulnerable parts,
telling us you can't or you're not 
or how are you going to...

Perhaps it's the emergence
of some longing unfulfilled.
Whatever direction it takes 
consumes the space that sleep requires.

We may be left struggling with unfulfilled 
efforts where we pretend to be asleep.
Or at some point the Midnight Voice fades
to permit sleep to take its rightful place.

The mind continues it's night journey
awake or asleep, begging not to be controlled.
It resists our efforts to direct or censor. 

When we return to wakefulness and 
if we are not propelled immediately 
into the day

When we are allowed to linger 
in a liminal space, 
we may be treated to an
Early Morning Retrospective.

This is the mind's slow walk
among the shadows and embers
of our past lives.

Unfolding itself scene by scene,
moving from one episode to the next,
we may choose to stop and hang out 
with one or another.

Sometimes I wonder if this Early Morning Retrospective
happens only when you've reached a certain age,
having accumulated enough material to 
shift the balance between time past 
and anticipated future time.

Dear reader, can it be that I have now 
revealed more about my age than I intended...
  












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One Response to Night Voices and Visions

  1. Polly Howells

    Love this, Carol. Thank you! Polly

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