Expedition

Darling, I am telling
you to sleep.
hush hush,
no wind outside your window,
and yet your brow
furrows into
deep mountain crevasses.
I can't plant anything
there in such a face.

No flowers ever grow 
in such altitude,
you can't even use
those special baking
instructions for cakes.

You don't get birthdays
at the top of the world.

You've been there,
I see it everyday
in the slope of your steps.
Were there sled dogs?
Do you have nightmares?

Is your sleeplessness 
ascertained from
24-hour sunlight
sometimes? When you
all had a cotillion 
in your parkas
at three am, because
it was so glorious
to see sun.

I cannot erase your
deep wrinkles,
can't ever take away
that journey,
the photos that hang
and the eeriness which lingers
on your brow.

I am telling you to go to sleep
and you are telling me
thirty names for snow
and you used every one 
up there.
Because that's all there was to name.

No babies are born
so high up,
no wildlife to name as a pet.

You never saw a single penguin.

hush hush,
I tell you to count penguins
to make up for it.

Darling, here
at lower latitudes
we have to sleep and wake
with sun patterns 
to work and ride trains.

You've forgotten 
and it will kill you 
in bed, shivering
and reciting thirty
goddamn names
for what is blinding you.

I am telling you to go to sleep,
and if you don't, if you stay propped
and whispering,
I'll sleep on the sofa
so you may carry on in 
the madness you get at
the top of everything
in the middle of nowhere.