Dreaming of Sleeping

Dreaming of Sleeping

I sometimes wonder, on winter Sunday afternoons,
when the washed plates dry quickly with the spoons
so cold, clustered in air devoid of warmth and red;
why my parents sleeping, face up, seem to be dead.
Breathless in cold, feet bloodless, lifeless--
blankets uptil the ears like shrouds. I guess
that it's from seeing funerals and clouds
that blankets over ears seem palls and shrouds.

Only lacking are the flowers, as if they died
unhonoured and uncried for. But I lied
when I said I wonder sometimes because
this thought came only once when all the flaws
in me were awake as I myself slept under
warm sheets in my safe bed, the air asunder
with cold combined by a spinning fan.

Perhaps I just imagine this because I can--
planes come flying over the seas and bomb
this building, while I am strolling out of home
and leave my neighbours to pull the pall
up to where over the ears, blocking cold, the fall
and deafen my sleeping father and mother.
That leaves me to listen to my brother
of how sons live on after their parents have passed
and where there was blood, there is a vast
hole in the heart that should be filled
with a picture of those fallen or killed.

Perhaps this is why people don't look
at other people sleeping, in case they mistook
their imagination as a deeper wish or want
and find themselves at a loss, with a gaunt
and haunting feeling or vision well-hid,
like being in another's head, seeing things so morbid.