With hands of starlings
Or count sheep when legs are dogs
Pulling you down the street
Sing the child in bed if you can
As water rises over the bland
Map of this sad Ohio town
A reckless river of borrowed
Thought, an inkpot of birds
Dancing through your inability
To understand why you unwind
In longing and how unkind
Panic leads you to the seam
In life, the dream assigned
To unsettled night each time
Love hungers you back over
Every line inscribed in wrong
The lullaby to which you belong
Peter Grandbois
Peter Grandbois is the author of fourteen books. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is poetry editor at Boulevard and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at www.petergrandbois.com.
