Bed and Bone

I can't wait to sleep in my own bed
I kept saying, sometimes to no one,
sometimes as provocation

to be left alone, so by the time
I came home and unpacked, I half
expected the bed to rise in greeting

like a lover, but it just lay there, dumb,
flat, I saw it wouldn't take off
so much as a sock if it were a man,

I would have to do everything,
but I went to it anyway, smiling,
beyond shame, I lay down and sighed

to my bed, that shifted a little as if afraid
I might weep, as I sometimes did,
but not now, now I was about to sleep

in my bed when suddenly I saw
how it would look like other beds
stripped of its covers, as I would look

without my hair and flesh—
and it was then, dear friend,
that grief took hold and shook me

back to that summer in Ithaca,
when, tired of Ulysses, we'd walk
from the dorm to stand below the waterfall,

dazed by how quick all passage is.
Bed to bone to nothing.
Mine, then gone.

 

Poems by Lynne Knight: