Everyday Canvas

Watching Them Sleep

Have you ever watched someone sleep and went like “Aawwwww!”? I love to watch my hubby taking his zzzz’s. I just adored my babies when they slept. Well, maybe because then they didn’t get into mischief, too. Now that they are grown up and have homes of their own, I cannot watch them anymore, but only make do with their snapshots of slumber I dared to take. I even loved to watch my cats and dog sleep. They all are or have been so trusting, so innocent.

Something about the sleeping person or animal makes me turn to jelly, probably because it is a special moment in which the moon smiles and all other concerns are erased. As Shakespeare said in Cymbeline, “He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache.”

The person who sleeps is so far away, having surrendered to his or her dreamland; yet, so near. If I weren’t afraid to startle him, I could touch him. Maybe it is this wanting to touch, but holding back thing that makes the sleeping beauties so dear, so close to my heart.

Here is a poem on this subject that I came across in a book called Selected Poems.

Watching You,
by James Schuyler


Watching you sleep
a thing you do so well
no shove no push
on the sliding face
of sleep as on
the deep a sea bird
of a grand wingspread
trusts what it knows
and I who rumple crumple
and mash (snore) amble
and ankle about wide
awake, wanting to fold,
loving to watch sleep
embodied in you my
warm machine that draws
me back to bed
and you who turn
all toward me
to love and seduce
me back to sleep "You
said 9:30, now it's
10:" you
don't seem to care
cold coffee (sugar,
no milk) about time:
you never do, never
get roiled the way
I do "Should I nag
you or shut up? If
you say, I will"
always be
glad to return to
that warm turning
to me in that
tenderest moment
of my nights,
and more, my days.