and I go

down into it, the hall again
(streetlights, blinds)

all the same all the dark

down into it and do what must be done
with my body, with the patience
that I do not have

fellow sufferer, fellow sleeper, not-

sleeper, seeker

night boat, little sail

in the slow air in the rounded dark
inside the broken night

rudderless elliptical

in the stitched-together minute

minute

minute

365 x night x 8 (new)

x 4
x 2
x 8 again (despair, iron)
x 2

x 1, x occasional, x rarity (fever, monsters, light)

= now

= again

once

About this poem
"'Called' arose out of years of waking in the night with my son, helping him return to sleep-an experience that I found exasperating, exhausting and occasionally transcendent. The mental math was one mechanism for moving myself toward the calmer end of the spectrum."
-Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet

About Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet
Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet is the author of "The Greenhouse" (Bull City Press, 2014). She teaches at UC Berkeley Extension and lives in Oakland, Calif.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience.

(c) 2014 Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate