You No Longer Need Sleep

(For My Son, 1990 - 2012)

You are no longer troubled 
by dreams. Dreams dark as dust storms, 
black and white images of Lincoln 
by the end of the war. Did you feel relief? Walking outside 
at 2 AM, lighting a cigarette, sending a text. While night 
is the largest dome that needs no beams. I loved you
the way the piano’s keys love Moonlight Sonata, 
like a city skyline, like an aircraft 
getting off the ground, 
you could never pronounce
Bernoulli, like extra time in a soccer game,
like soft-boiled eggs, I’m sitting across from you
at the kitchen table
hoping you eat. Hoping you have a day 
without drugs. The backs of my hands have blue veins 
that look like earthworms sliding over bones, and I don’t know 
what they’re trying to get away from, 
don’t have the persistence 
I once had. 

We gave you a place:
leave your jacket on a chair, 
shoes inside the door. A workshop,
drill press, bandsaw, blades, strange friends 
of graceful instruments, 
your mandolins, your guitars, but other voices 
were more eloquent 
than ours.

JOHN ROMAGNA

John Romagna began writing poetry after the death of his son, Tim. Writing keeps him connected with family, friends, and a community of writers. He lives in Clinton, New Jersey, with his wife, Karen, a landscape and seascape painter. He gains inspiration from the poetry of Mary Oliver and many others.