Poem for Tuesday and Birthday Boy

For the Sleepwalkers
By Edward Hirsch

Tonight I want to say something wonderful
for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith
in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path
that leads to the stairs instead of the window,
the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing
to step out of their bodies into the night,
to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.
Always they return home safely, like blind men
who know it is morning by feeling shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.
That's why I want to say something astonishing
like: Our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs
flying through the trees at night, soaking up
the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.
And now our hearts are thich black fists
flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.
We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-
walkers who rise our of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.
We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness
and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.

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Quickie, it's Adam's birthday and I ran late tonight messaging him to try to coordinate having dinner and presents delivered when Amazon apparently had trouble with his building's loading dock and the restaurant had to coordinate dropping off food with the main desk. It sounds like he had a fairly quiet birthday, since he had to work and since Katherine is still visiting her family in Virginia, but he worked on a project with a friend from high school and it sounds like the food was good!

We had a quiet day here in 100-degree heat -- I only walked outside during the thunderstorm, at the end when the sun came out, though apparently it wasn't at the right angle for me to see a rainbow. We watched Rasputin, which is on YouTube somewhat fuzzily but mostly complete -- I haven't seen it in over a decade so that was entertaining even if Rickman and McKellen are far kinder to Rasputin and the Czar than either deserves. Since I have only one photo from this birthday, here are a few from earlier ones as well: