Clepsydra

This poem arose out of a New Yorker article on sleep hygiene, insomnia, and the body’s sensitivity to light. I was struck by the notion that changes in light or dark help our bodies predict the futurefor instance, dusk signals that it will be time to wind down and eventually sleep. But the little blue-light-emitting devices we carry around distort and disrupt these natural signals. Sleep becomes elusive and frayed. This led me to meditate on time’s drift, futuristic anxiety, and our state of being in an increasingly technical, frenetic, disconnected, and maybe even dystopian society.