In order to view this poem with the line breaks the author intended, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in the landscape orientation on your phone or tablet.

January Insomnia
Nadine Fiedler

winter, so stingy with light
we soak in the blackness
crinkle down a slat of the blinds
to look for raindrops, gauge the severity
of storms and improbable threats
that lurk outside the streetlight’s
gauzy skirts

sleep and dreams come hard
night is too long to sustain us
it’s tired of itself too

black cat smells my
crackling exhausted brain
jumps up
I breathe
in, hold, out
remember that night will end
(winter will end)
and that we are somehow safe

—
Nadine Fiedler has had a long career in communications and as a freelance writer and editor. Her poems have been printed in Sky Island Journal; Cirque; the Oregon Poetry Association’s yearly journal; and in Windfall: A Poetry of Place, and she was an invited reader at the Portland Winter Poetry Festival.

Know anyone who might appreciate reading Nadine’s poem?
Why not share the link to this page?

Have you read these poems:
Wedding Photo by Warren Woessner
Death Watch by K. A. McGowan

Table of Contents