I heard the word awakening. It sounds like a warm hug, soft blanket, restful, gentle. Being jolted awake though is the same thing as awakening, if you think about it. The end state the same.

What I wouldn’t give to awaken. No set time but rather, when my body was fully rested. The cells gone through their complete loops of repair, rejuvenate, rebuild, rework, rewire, regard. They’re fully quenched. Drinking from the cup of a steady oxygenated breath, a cortisol leveled, a body stilled.

The cobwebs of the day, week, month, year, life dusted out of the dark corners of my mind. Processed, filed away after a synapse or four makes meaning out of them, makes a story that sticks, makes the dreamer murmur quietly in profound awe

at the speed of light,

at the geranium seed unfurling to the heavens stretching its roots to the earth’s core,

at her first breath,

at his last breath,

at the moment the asteroid cratered the moon.

In this moment of more and race and critique and hustle and responsibility and perfection and mobs and loneliness…

Don’t you just want to crawl into your own sleep? Nestle there, in the hollows surrounded by soft green moss atop decaying redwoods, being rocked in the blue of the sky, the blue of the night, the blue of your soul.

Where time isn’t measured in any clock but, rather, the place you’re at on the curve of the earth. The angle it bends towards the sun. The ice. Where whole peoples and cultures emerged on the head of a pin, their stories etched on cave walls, in footsteps buried below layers of leaves, tons of clam shells, in tiers of canyons.

This poem, it’s about awakening.

To awaken though needs rest.