GRIEF Poem: Missing the Midnight Highway, by Mary Ringland

Sleep – you used to be one of the good guys,
used to give me lots of zizz and fizz.
But now – it seems – you’ve gone your own way.

Baby, don’t you care,
don’t you care for me no more?

Are you out there – somewhere – laying your head
on the salacious lap of a good-time girl – out for the count
on her sticky settee or snoring loudly in the thorny shrubs of suburbia.

Sleep – can I tempt you back
to me
with a soothing cup of Chamomile tea?

Sleep – come home – immediately. I need the rationale of your R.E.M.
to rescue me from baleful Buddhist chanting,
from the night after night monotony of white noise,
from the stomach-churning stench of French Lavender.

I need your help to recalibrate the present – fine-tune the future,
peel my eyes off the fractured walls – obfuscate the ceiling cracks.

We are creatures of the night, you and I, so let us lie down
together again
in safe surrender and snooze until the Blackbird sings.

Sleep – I miss you so. You were the A to Z of my psyche,
my midnight highway to the spirit world. I miss the sageness
of your graphic nightmares: the neglected ghosts,
the unremembered memories. But, most of all, I miss
the warning bark of the brown and white dog and the unexpected
visits from my father – so alive – so familiar – so welcome
in his Burnt Umber tweed – striding through love’s ectoplasm,
arms outstretched – announcing!

‘There she is,
there’s my best girl!’