Triolet after Trying to Sleepwalk out a Window by Sonja Johanson

Black night        

            and the whiteness

                        of the snow;

 

the distance to the ground below.

 

                                                The light

curtain of the mind

            that makes me go,

 

     each night

                        to look out on the snow

 

to see

            reflected

                        in the darkened glass

                                                the glow

 

            of buildings.

                        In this dream of heights

                                               

and balconies

 

            above the whiteness of the snow,

 

the distance to the ground.

                                                Below—

                                                            the light.

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Sonja Johanson has recent work appearing in the Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, and Poet Lore. She is a contributing editor at the Eastern Iowa Review, and the author of Impossible Dovetail (IDES, Silver Birch Press), all those ragged scars (Choose the Sword Press), and Trees in Our Dooryards (Redbird Chapbooks). Sonja divides her time between work in Massachusetts and her home in the mountains of western Maine. Follow her at www.sonjajohanson.net.