Napping

By Joseph Teti

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A poem with folly.
To ED.

Before or after naps, after labor,
after being lowered into my bed
with tiredness, I’d glance about my room,
weighed down still with my anxious, hasty thoughts
and graspings after straws.
                                                  On my right side,
above me, on the windowsill, there stood
an icon of the Pantocrator.
                                                 There
my gaze hesitated—my vision blurred--
my right eye looked on Him in clear, straight lines,
but my left eye blocked itself on my nose!
I winked each eye to prove my theorem, but
too dead to hold my left eye shut for now,
I satisfied myself with half-veiled sight
until it would be time to get up--soon--

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Joseph Teti is an emerging poet from Hyattsville, Maryland. He is a recent graduate from Hillsdale College and a fierce defender of Platonism and Romanticism.