Under the Blanket

Is everyone comfortable? Is everyone alright?

I think that you are (though I can’t see you), bundled up so tight,

Under your blanket and gone from the sight

Of the sun in the daytime and the stars at night.

Toads that hop and worms that crawl,

Together you slumber beneath your shawl

Of leaves that have fallen in piles deep and tall,

You can’t hear me whisper, you don’t hear me call.

Or maybe you do, after all.

Dreaming little mouse and slumbering green snake,

Strange but courteous bedfellows you make. 

Nestled in your leafy blanket, safe from the rake,

Unkind seasons will pass before you’re awake.

What dreams are dreamt by the burrowing bee?

Does the drowsing mole dream in color although he can’t see?

Does the sleeping menagerie beneath this sea

Of leaves dream a wild-whetted notion of me?

I listen for the answer (I’m down on one knee).

The secrets of millions of years are told

In the mysterious dreams of hearts just as old,

Beneath the blanket of red and of gold,

The kindly province of Morphean hold.

A sleeping woodland fellowship unseen,

Dreams in silence beneath the screen

And cover of placid mien,

Belying an ancient, turgid scene.

Oh, sleeping creatures… your dreams… what can they mean?

The fabric of dreams of the tortoise and snail,

And the fabric of the blanket that conceals the tale

That’s told in somnolent secret in wooded winter vale,

Are of the same stuff, and as quiet as shale.

Under the blanket and untold to man,

The winter dreams of sleeping creatures are the dreams of the land.

The leaves on the ground of the trees’ mighty stand,

Are that blanket and cradle and great girding band.

And dreams that are dreamt there I’m not meant to understand.