Naps

As if the glasses weren’t bad enough,
or stiff legs after such wild exertion

as jogging through some pages in a chair,
or giving the gruesome facts their morning scrape

to check the spreading patches of dirty gray;
as if the short snatches of conversation

I can still often make out were not
so often reassurances about my weight;

as if the evening didn’t come too soon,
now I’m falling asleep in the afternoon.

I’m no drowsy palace-worn caliph:
time refuses to be on my side.

There is this to do, there is that,
there is persistently the bloody other,

and calls from every he she and it
with two bits to be politely dodged:

I simply can’t afford to be nodding off
when circumstances call for plodding on.

Because evening is coming, coming soon,
and now I’m sleeping in the afternoon.