‘Insomnia, My Sometime Muse’ and Other Poetry by Norman Solowey

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Insomnia, My Sometime Muse

She comes to me while I’m asleep,
Not with strange imaginings of dreams
But with fragmented thoughts. It seems
She thinks they cannot keep
But must be worked upon, upon this hour.
While I from Hypnos try to wrest
Some morsel of his healing power,
Sleep becomes a useless quest
And this vivid ferment in my head
Drives me restless from my bed.
As these fragments rattle round my brain
It comes as a complete surprise
To find that they comprise a quatrain
Or a pair of rhyming lines.
Word on playful word cascade
Until some meaning I persuade, 
And though I write her all my best
Unsatisfied, she will not let me rest.
And in the morning when I rise to write
She’s still asleep, unbothered by the light.

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Netherlight

We wandered vaguely through the night
until we found that field of mist.
Dewy vapors night had kissed
enshrouded us in netherlight.

As we crouched down inside that mist
and water vapors brushed our faces,
we had no thought of happier places
here where you and I first kissed. 

The stars, the moon, the gods, the graces
all smiled down on our love
and blessed our union from above
with hopeful tender sweet embraces.

So we believed the heavens move
in concert with our lacey dreams,
we floated on the ghostly streams
the misted fields for us had wove.

We still believe in Love it seems,
although the mists have long since flown,
although the fields are overgrown
We still believe in lover’s dreams.

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Norman Solowey is a graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in psychology. His work has appeared in The Lyric. He lives in Lake Monticello, Virginia.