To a Good Night’s Sleep
You know how it goes but never why
or when – perhaps it’s all that cheese
and caffeine or a black cat crossing
but sure as broken eggs make omelettes
you can bet your life that one night
all your hidden quirks and contradictions
your paraphernalia and half-remembered
dreams will show up again along with
various strange compulsions to do the things
you always do in sleep like fly impossibly
slow or run rooted to the spot
so you choose familiar ways and means
you ought to know but clearly don’t as things
take a different turn and you veer off-course
and somehow lose the plot yet still
you need to find a way home
like Odysseus did though it took him
ten years and that was pushing it
but the more you try the more convoluted
things become like a bad game
of Déjà Vu where the rules keep changing
so you throw the dice again and head
for Go or land on someone else’s
square with double-rent to pay
but don’t even think about collecting
two hundred pounds or it’ll be Jail and
Groundhog Day all over again.
Huw Gwynn-Jones comes from a line of poets in the Welsh bardic tradition. His work has appeared in Acumen and Tears in the Fence, and his debut pamphlet, The Art of Counting Stars, was published in October 2021.