Insomniac

Stress, worry and concern keep me awake. They nudge my shoulder if I should sleep. We smoke cigarettes at my kitchen table, blowing smoke-rings until late morning hours. They sit in the ashtray giving nasty predictions of things to come, that might or might not be. They paint remorse in the wrinkles of my forehead and draw anxiety rings under my eyes, with the ashes. They drape over my review mirror, on the drive to work, obscuring my view of suicide drivers trying to crash into my car- they laugh at near misses misdirecting my thoughts. They scamper around my desk hiding in the paper-clip tray and pencil holder, sneering, throwing economic facts at me-- the high price of life; the rising cost of funerals, the fine print in insurance contracts, telling me how poor the company is doing while tossing little sprinkles of feat on my keyboard. “Downsizing –you are next!” They pronounce. Even at Sunday mass, I see them peaking-out from under the little white envelopes in the collection plate, screaming at me -- “You can’t buy your soul back; never will you buy it back! Never; never!" I confess my fears to my priest; advice from the Bible is given, “Birds neither sow nor reap nor gather yet, your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” I close my eyes to sleep and find an image of a well nourished Falcon, splitting, striking -through air with a lifeless, broken, bleeding Dove in his talons.