Insomniac Poetry
It's been a while since I was in the special club of people who are awake at 4:00 am because they can't sleep. Luckily my insomnia has to do with rabble rousing neighbors making noise as opposed to the health problems1 that used to keep me up at night. This poem came from a mailer for Poetry Magazine and just might convince me to subscribe for a year.
Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.
Kay Ryan
Shark's Teeth
1My gall bladder was removed one Christmas Eve.
4:29:46 AM 
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