Sleep (or Lack Thereof)

La Mere, Elizabeth Nourse, 1888

......

Summertime, and the living is easy
Fish are jumping, and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich, and your ma is good looking
So hush little baby, don't you cry.
Summertime, lullaby from Porgy and Bess, 1935
......

The original version of this song is quite soothing, and somewhat

slow and melancholy, in natural minor. Gershwin was actually

inspired to write the song after hearing a Ukrainian lullaby,

Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon (A Dream Passes by the Window).

I love to fall immediately into a delicious deep sleep and then

sleep through the entire night. This scrumptious sleep was

always taken for granted in my younger years. Unfortunately,

I can all too often identify with this poem by Billy Collins. I think

next time, I’ll try counting jumping fish in a lovely field of water.

Insomnia

by Billy Collins
Sailing Alone Around the Room

After counting all the sheep in the world
I enumerate the wildebeests, snails,
camels, skylarks, etc.,

then I add up all the zoos and aquariums,
country by country.

By early light I am asleep
in a nightmare about drowning in the Flood,
yelling across the rising water
at preoccupied Noah as his wondrous
ark sails by and begins to grow smaller.

Now a silhouette on the horizon,
the only boat on earth is disappearing.

As I rise and fall on the rocking waves,
I concentrate on the giraffe couple,
Their necks craning over the roof,
to keep my life from flashing before me.

After all the animals wink out of sight
I float on my back, eyes closed,
I picture all the fish in creation
leaping a fence in a field of water,
one colorful species after another.

Jumping Trout, Winslow Homer

......

I even found The Willow’s Lullaby by Priscilla Hernández.

If this doesn't do the trick, I don't know what will...

Click (here) to listen.