When Night Becomes Day, by Ronald Moran

Ronald Moran
WHEN NIGHT BECOMES DAY

It is 6:45 in the morning, and the temperature
should be
in the mid-to-upper 60s, a great relief from
our
afternoon burnings in upstate South Carolina,
where

I am living out my days alone in a small house
built
wrong from the street, like a row house, put up
only
if the backs of properties face the uninhabitable,
like mine;

but all I am really thinking about is how to get
back
to sleep, now being like the middle of night
for me,
even though my dreams are taking on too much
of the bizarre,

as in a pair of lions chasing my car, and me having
to shove
one of them out the window, while my mother
grows
more insane by the moment, and I have to yell
at her,

when, alive, she was just shy and self-conscious;
and,
uh oh, I am on a golf course I thought I knew well,
and, whoa,
there’s a green with two holes, as if for beanbags
while

I am wearing a light brown suit, as out of place here
as I feel
on this course that I thought I knew, and there’s
Mother,
sane as ever, leaning far over and making a putt,
looking

at me as if I were insane (What are you doing here?)
but now
I am thinking, why do I want to go back to sleep,
when, Jane,
I have mostly nightmares since you died, and why,
when

I awaken, am I often talking out loud as much as
two sentences
to my dreammates, before I realize it, and I think
of the time,
in your last months, when I was dreaming of trying
to punch

some guy threatening both of us, while, in fact, I was
punching
your small back in slow motion until you woke up,
saying,
Ron, what’re you doing? Stop it! And I did, my fist
in mid-air.