Overnighter
In sleep she opens up her battered case
and finds within that rugged portmanteau
dark recollections years cannot efface,
although the waking mind has let them go.
Behind those dormant eyes her thoughts compete
to artfully assort and so define
conundrums with most answers incomplete
to which she does not consciously incline.
And when she stirs, resurgent as the day
and life resumes with rest obliquely got,
in truth, some things she thinks are packed away
are carried in the heart as much as not.
And so to dream can grant benign surcease,
permitting her to rise and go in peace.
by Phil Huffy, first published in Pangolin
Editor’s Note: The stellar iambic pentameter and rhymes of this sonnet perfectly support the extended metaphor introduced in the first stanza.
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