When Your People Call My People to Arrange a Meeting
- When Your People Call My People to Arrange a Meeting
Know that lately, I am giving myself
to sleep as I once gave myself in love,
my body flung eagerly into bed; limbs limp and heavy
with pleasure; the bedclothes on waking arranged exactly
as I entered them. I am in love now
with rest, with release from the tireless ego—
let us meet while we sleep (which seems lately to be less
a rehearsal for death, than a preview
of immortality), and see what our souls see,
where we are our inward selves only,
and all our selves are not at war—
when all our loyalty belongs to dreaming. [End Page 160]
April Ossmann is the author of As If Light Could Save Us (Four Way Books, forthcoming 2017) and Anxious Music (Four Way Books, 2007) and has published her poetry widely in journals and anthologies. Her poetry awards include a 2013 Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant and a Prairie Schooner Readers’ Choice Award. Former executive director of Alice James Books, she owns a poetry consulting business, offering manuscript editing, publishing advice, tutorials, and workshops. She is Editor-in-Residence for the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Sierra Nevada College. She lives in West Windsor, Vermont, and can be found at www.aprilossmann.com.
