A Form of Optimism

I doze in tranches and planes,
.....angled acutely
..........like some Cubist harlequin.

Easy once, that nightly pirouette
.....into REM sleep,
..........but what with the road rage,

dirty bombs, malevolent spores,
.....it’s clear that’s Oblivion
..........whose sulfurous wheezes

are singeing our neck-hairs,
.....hence my new habit
..........of sleeping with the lights on––

which doesn’t mean sleep’s
.....a bad thing, in fact
..........its lack makes everyone’s bones

cry out, and right now my vertebrae
.....are emitting a cascade
..........of wails to do a banshee proud.

O numinous world!, where a thing
.....so routine, so banal
..........as tonight’s pastel sky

still takes one’s breath, even as out there
.....they’re searching for the next
..........seven year-old stolen from her bed

while asleep, and cactuses in the desert
.....(where the body waits)
..........already are entering bloom.

*Roy Jacobstein’s latest book of poetry A Form of Optimism (University Press of New England, 2006), won the Samuel French Morse Prize, selected by Lucia Perillo and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His previous book, Ripe (U Wisconsin 2002) won the Felix Pollak Prize, selected by Edward Hirsch,. His poetry appears in many literary publications and is included in LITERATURE: Reading Fiction, Poetry & Drama (McGraw-Hill, 2006). A public health physician and former official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, he works in Africa and Asia on women’s reproductive health programs and lives with his in Chapel Hill, N.C.