Sleep Is A Most Desirable Time But Are We In Control? Poem by Reginald Reid

SLEEP

Sleep, how should I address you?
I am your slave.
Are you my master or my mistress?
There is no time without you.
On you my life depends.

You transport me to another time and world
bringing me peace and torment,
washing over me as if a tide returning in stealth
to cover me in inescapable embrace.
I feel as though in free fall, hypnotised, surrendered to slumber.

You are the embodiment of contradiction,
my sanctuary of peace, my retreat in isolation,
my tormentor and my tease. I have no life without you.
You overpower me at any time without warning
stealing away the moments and hours without consideration.

In my willing surrender I am captured by your familiar touch
so often to drift in euphoric fantasy and delight.
But you also take me to familiar places and people,
recalling past deeds and those not done,
torturous recollections, fantasies and half truths.

How often have you swept me away in pleasantness
embracing my lover?
How often have you tempted me with delights I shall never have?
Will you always pretend to be my friend or will you bring again and again
fear and panic at the unreality you suspend me in.

Do you play with me like Job? Testing?
Do you deliver me to an actual other world?
Why do you offer both bitter and sweet without distinction
when all that I can do is to be carried by your whim
with the overwhelming desire that I will wake?



Sleep, I tell myself,
you are that time when the mind is allowed to make sense of life,
when we regain our sanity,
when we achieve our most desired fantasy
or fall to our most unwanted destiny.

Refresh me now as you are able,
for I would spend my time in happiness
until you come to take me to my final rest,
that final sleep wherein you as harbinger of the time
that lasts forever will hold me in your grasp.