I can't sleep... I have insomnia...
for some reason my mind
is too active to switch off -
as if it is flooded with too many thoughts,
too many feelings, too many ideas,
leaving me staring at the clock.

As I have laid here in bed,
under the covers, with my eyes momentarily closed
and then open wide,
I have been thinking and wondering
about life and where the lights
of my journey have taken me...
I have been flicking through
the many pages of the book
of where I have been,
with whom, why, and how,
and considering the many rhyming verses
of my internal and external poetry.

I don't know why this happened
tonight of all nights -
but what I realised was that,
like everything, I was meant to be
awake for a reason...
I don't know why, what, or who
stopped me from sleeping
the whole night through;
but as a result of not being able to sleep
I chose to do something I had
not truly done for a while: listen -
and what did I hear at this early hour?
Nothing, no one - and yet I know that
something and someone was right there with me
holding my hand and telling me not to hold back.

I know that most people would rather
be sleeping when everybody else
around them is doing the same,
but no matter what someone is doing
someone else on the other side
of the world may be doing the complete opposite -
and for every person who is able to
sleep all night and every night
there are those whose mind
sometimes finds it hard
to get the rest that it needs,
and though most of the time
I can and do sleep like a log
tonight, this morning, I find myself
a poetry writing member
of The Restless Club.