New poem: "A Pillow to Rest My Weary Head"

 

A Pillow to Rest my Weary Head

 

Where can I find a pillow

that will rest my weary head,

support all the thought’s I’ve had,

and let me fall into a blissful sleep?

 

I turned to Harold Bloom again, Professor

Emeritus at Yale, who died October 14, 2019

but did not believe in the afterlife, just

to stimulate my mind; —

 

His posthumous book, Take Arms Against a Sea

of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind Over

a Universe of Death, found immortality in the poet’s words,

but not in their immortal souls; —

 

And as exciting to read as his writing is, it only filled

my weary head with needless dread; and I turned to the author

of the popular When Bad Things Happen to Good People,

rabbi Harold Kushner, —

 

In the hope that his fourth book, To Life! Celebration Of Jewish

Being and Thinking, might give me a pillow to rest my head;

but the Jewish way of thinking proved much too busy

for the rest I badly needed; —

 

And I opened up Next Door to Heaven, by S. G. Thigpen,

a record of personal anecdotes told by the elderly folk of the Pearl

River, southern Mississippi region; but it, too, grew wearisome:

different, but same old, same old; —

 

So, I tried once more with libertarian commentator, the sagacious

George F. Will, a syndicated columnist I’ve read off and on for years,

with his collection One Man’s America; but, sadly, this brilliant

soul-crafter too did nothing to ease my mind; —

 

And I turned to C. G. Jung, whose thoughts always comforted me;

but how many times can I read Modern Man in Search of a Soul

and not get bored when I found my lost soul long ago?

I do so need a pillow to rest my weary head.