To Keats: Returning

This comes from the better side of insomnia.

TO KEATS: RETURNING

A swoon beneath the pillows and the sheets

of incoherent chanting, echoing beats

of tantric verse so sweet,

an unrelenting, blessed curse that frees

the dewy beads inert to drip and mingle

as rivulets through canyon crags

in willful, unconstrued meandering—

a yearning of perpetual returning

to mightier bear and dare the icy floes

adrift in their fragmented symmetry—

or as the thorny desert stubble plain

with its intermittent tumbleweed,

all pursuing harmony ’mid Beauty’s bliss

and Wonder’s mystery.