Triolet after Trying to Sleepwalk out a Window

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.