Unknown Beloved
--Lisa Olstein 

The canopy is singing.
Sloths in sleep look like the dreaming
dead. Awake little different
under eyelashes stalwart as sapodillas,
fringed as palms. If to attain true mastery
ten thousand hours are required, yes.
If it is the habit of geniuses to nap,
yes. If the highly successful sleep fewer
than four hours per night, the inverse.
If expert survivalists sleep while
maintaining partial consciousness,
the reverse. But you sleep fitful in a bed
at the average, appointed intervals
and under it you keep only some number
of heaped up words. What is our dreaming
good for, it is reasonable to wonder,
in what are we expert? A certain fumbling
in the hours when we make good habitats
for other organisms which is where
dimly we first recognized each other.