Weary to my bed
Begin a journey in my head
I find no quiet

I am working from home and lucky to be working from home.

No driving.

Actually been days since I drove anywhere.

I am working.

I get tired, very tired.

With all that is going on, weary is such a perfect word.

Bedtime comes, I read in bed for a minute and the eyes start to close.

And off to the land of Nod.

At least for a bit.

At some point in the night, I wake up.

I am not moving but my brain is speeding at a bazillion miles an hour.

At that awful hour of 3AM.

Ray Bradbury has been there.

In Something Wicked This Way Comes, Mr. Bradbury writes, “Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open.”

Hemingway writes of his mind and being able to choke it so he could sleep.

Not that I dare put myself in the same boat with Mr. Hemingway or Mr. Bradury, but that they are in the boat with me where we say “To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired“, as Mr. Shakespear put it.

Because Big Bill is also in the boat with us.

Big Bill lived and worked 300 years ago and was plagued with the sleepless nights and the overactive mind.

In his Sonnet XXVII, he writes;
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.

All of us in the boat together.

All of us asking where is sleep.

It would take someone as wise as Solomon to answer.

Lucky for me, Solomon did.

In Proverbs, Solomon writes, “When you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.”

What is the secret to this sweet sleep?

“Do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight, preserve sound judgment and discretion.” (Proverbs 3:19-21 NIV)

Wisdom.

Understanding.

Sound judgement.

Discretion.

Easy.

No problem.

And I thought toilet paper was in short supply.

You’ll say to yourself
scared of life, more of dying
life at any price

Sitting this morning drinking coffee, listen to my neighborhood come awake.

The loudest noise was birdsong.

Brown Thrashers, Cardinals, maybe red wing blackbirds.

Then the garbageman.

It was early for the garbageman but I had read that that job was a little easier as traffic was so sparse in the mornings.

I listened to the noise of the garbageman and I said to myself, “The Garbageman cometh.”

Which made me say out loud, “The Iceman cometh.”

My next thought was of the NBA great George Gervin who was nicknamed, “The Iceman”.

Whenever his team, the San Antonio Spurs, played on TV, the announcers would say, “The Iceman Cometh.”

As I sat this morning with all this going through my head, I realized I had no idea what the “The Iceman Cometh” was.

In the back of my mind I was pretty sure it was a play.

It was up in my memory down the same hallway with “Death of Salesman” so maybe it was by Arthur Miller.

I did the google and found out it’s a Eugene O’Neil play.

The play, “The Iceman Cometh” is something I have never read.

I scanned the wikipedia article on Iceman Cometh.

I read some of the lines of the play.

I took the lines of today’s Haiku from one of lines.

Words from yesterday still have messages for today.

Mr. O’Neil is someone I have never read.

Maybe it is time I did.