Monday Morning Breaks

Morning breaks on crooked arm,

From dreams I resist sun.

(Wake, wake, you slugabed,

Work needs to be done.)

Very greatly, lassitude

Tethers me to bed.

(But without your work-a-day

Children won’t be fed.)

In a slumber well intact

Fortunes visit me.

(To collar me in dream-land

They beg on bended knee.)

Sleep-dismissing day and work,

Spirits drag me down.

(You’ve no use for daylight.

Sink, sink and drown.)

Last-ditch fury, roil the quilts

Of my tender sleep.

(May as well stop fighting.

Laugh, laugh the deep.)

#23 of 30 Poems in November to benefit Center for New Americans, styled after a poem titled "In Arcady" by William Cosmo Monkhouse (1840-1901).