Sleep, the Mindless Philosopher

Asleep, the brainy vertebrates
Taste the lives of trees and corals,
Complicated, thoughtless beings

Who have no mysterious need
To dream in order to function
As sufficiently hungry things.

Asleep, the long evolution
Of thoughts and their entanglements
Pauses between avalanches

That shouldn't come to rest at all,
The night storms of the winter woods
Rattling the near-frozen branches.

Asleep, deeply asleep, below
The thresholds of contemplation,
The slumbering astronomer

At last allows luminous clouds
To pass without explanation
And measures no phenomena.