Napping

26/8/2023

By Joseph Teti

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--

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.

5 Comments

Ron Pilgrim link

9/9/2023 12:23:30 am

Hello, my name is Ron and I'm happy to leave my comment on "Napping." It has many lively details. I enjoyed the first person voice of the narrator. First person poems (good ones) are not easy to write. There were humorous lines, such as "my left eye blocked itself on my nose!" And I liked the last line too: "I satisfied myself with half-veiled sight until it would be time to get up--soon--" Well done.

Joseph Teti

17/9/2023 05:33:17 am

Thank you so much for your comment! Yes, the nose line is the source of the (scriptural/Pauline) folly, for me, and also the epigraph to Dickenson, for her fly which “interposed”—

Dylan L

22/9/2023 01:24:58 am

Well done, brother! How dangerous it is to nap idly amidst our preoccupations with our many idols. Our work cannot get in our way of shedding these idols. We must indeed see clearly.

22/9/2023 01:26:58 am

Oh wait I think I misunderstood. Now I am reminded of your Pantocrator.

27/9/2023 08:45:55 pm

I think you're onto something, still–the passive voice on the "lowering" makes for an allusion to the paralytic lowered through the roof [Lk 5:19]. When we are forgiven, we can be truly active in Christ! Thanks for commenting.

Napping

Leave a Reply.

Genres