Homage to the Launching Place

Pleasure-craft of the sprung rhythms, bed,
kindest of quadrupeds,
you are also the unrocking boat
that moves on silence.

Straining hatchway into this world,
you sustain our collapses
above earth; guarantor of evolution,
you are our raised baseline.

Resisting gravity, for us and in us,
you form a planet-wide
unobtrusive discontinuous platform,
a layer: the mattressphere,

pretty nearly our highest common level
(tables may dispute it).

Muscles' sweatprinted solace,
godmother of butt-stubbing dreams,
you sublimate, Great Vehicle,
all our upright passions;

midwife of figuring, and design,
you moderate them wisely;
aiming solitude outwards, at action,
you sigh Think some more. Sleep on it…

Solitude. Approaching rest
Time reveals her oscillation
and narrows into space;
there is time in that dilation:
Mansions. Defiles. Continents.
The living and the greatly living,

objects that take sides,
that aren't morally neutral

you accept my warm absence
there, as you will accept,
one day, my cooling presence.

I loved you from the first, bed,
doorway out of this world;
above your inner springs
I learned to dig my own.

Primly dressed, linen-collared one,
you look so still, for your speed,
shield that carries us to the fight
and bears us from it.