Waking From Sleep

Waking from Sleep


Inside the veins there are navies
setting forth,
Tiny explosions at the waterlines,
And seagulls weaving in the wind
of the salty blood.


It is the morning.
The country has slept the whole winter.
Window seats were covered with fur skins,
the yard was full of stiff dogs,
and hands that clumsily held heavy books.


Now we wake, and rise from bed,
and eat breakfast!
Shouts rise from the harbor of the blood,
Mist, and masts rising,
the knock of wooden tackle in the sunlight.


Now we sing, and do tiny dances
on the kitchen floor.
Our whole body is like a harbor at dawn;
We know that our master has left us
for the day.


Robert Bly

Posted over on Poetry Foundation

Robert Bly, “Waking from Sleep” from Silence in the Snowy Fields (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1962). Copyright © 1962 by Robert Bly.