When He Can'T Sleep
He remembers his grandmother
sitting next to him on the couch during naptime;
his two-year-old body restless and jumpy.
She would yawn a tremendous open, lion’s mouth
yawn and shake her mane of hair that fell around
her shoulders . . . and he would wait for the roar that never
came. Instead, her measured breath would flow out into
the sigh of the breeze through the trees or the swell
of the ocean - the earth’s inhalations, it seemed.
Years later in Iraq and Iran, as missiles whistled
overhead, the roar of tankers and hard-scrabble
footsteps loud in the night, he puts
himself to sleep
with the memory
of her breathing.
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