Sleepless

It’s three in the morning and I’m looking
at the insides of my eyelids
where a five barred gate leads onto the reedbeds
stretching all the way to the lighthouse.

But what I actually want are highlands,
with proper heather, rocks and scree
with the odd deer or highland cattle
to give the scene a natural animality.

Instead, my mind’s eye gives me
a hopeless compromise to choose:
odd deer and highland cattle in the reedbeds
or a lighthouse in the middle of Glencoe.

I put that sleep down somewhere and I can’t find it now;
I’ve tried telling myself some poems, but then
I have to turn the light back on
to find a pen to write them down.

In the morning, I don’t quite understand them,
but things look different.