The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

-Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

Oh yes. I’m presently working on a short piece that’s entirely about what a man does in the moments before he falls asleep each night. That little ritual of fresh darkness, you know. Do you have one? Maybe you start out on your back, think about work a while, roll onto your left side and pray — or think about sex — maybe watch TV and let the set turn itself off. Maybe you’re working your way through The Brothers Karamazov, and your wake up at 2am, with the damned massive thing smashing your nose.

I listen to CDs of mountain streams or ocean surf. Maybe I think about toy trains. No no, that’s not it. Maybe I get fetal and imagine ten red-eyed coyotes padding through the orchard, past the playground and the swimming pool, ignoring the mailbox like I do, and resting on their haunches at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe they doze toward dawn, and dream of me, descending with a great bowl of Starbucks frappucino and ten stout straws.

My point is that all the times and places of transition between consciousness and unconsciousness, wake and sleeping, living and dying, sin and redemption, sane and coocoo for cocopuffs, are target rich environments for us mad poets.

I spend a lot of time crouching there in Morley’s doorway, wishing he’d thought to deck the transom with mistletoe.