‘Sleep with the sun, not moon, my dear.

Save starlight for Beltane.

A debt of sand is one to fear,

Best pay your tax in grain.’

It does not do to dwell on time ‘wasted’ on sleep. Such time, given it is spent at the appropriate hours, allows for the remaining grains of sand in your day to be of higher quality. A debt of sleep is something you cannot pay down with time- instead it saps your very life, days wasted with lethargy in favor of nights misplaced. In this poem, Beltane, a holiday celebrated betwixt the spring equinox and the summer solstice, is a stand in for holy days in general- those special occasions like New Year’s Eve or Birthdays, where, almost ritually, the night is pierced by our wakefulness, by our observance. To protect these vigilant nights, to honor them with intention, they must be infrequent, or they will mean nothing at all. As always, the quotation marks in this poem indicate that I am not the one speaking- this is my Mistress Time with her own advice- I am not perfect at preserving nights for sleep, and this little rhyme acts as a reminder to do better.

© Aimee Wood, 2022