The 24 hours of natural sleep

Prior to my abduction, students merrily gathered in
chambers clustered along passages, and my breath
swole all the apparatus of the university hospital clinic,
savior of wayward intelligent and other rural children.

Then blown like knots of mucus, teenagers through
crash windows, ashes rose to mix with snowflakes,
the suddenness of my absence was the bunker bomb
that saved only conspirators and their empty victory.

Now my dogs patrol with their noses in the curtain folds
Blind as moles to real criminality, claim only movement
unsanctioned, sounds that are free and wild, productive.
Dogs sniff out warm terror and target soft, darting beasts.

All day long and through the night they lay in wait at a
tractably ebbing and spiking unwakefullness, one eye
or ear, a whisker as lonely drunken antennae, the mind
sifting through other years, categories of intransigence.


Dr. Donna Thong