Poems for a Racing Mind That Won’t Switch Off

THE JOURNAL · SLEEP & NIGHT

For the dark room where the list keeps reading itself.

The room is dark, the house is quiet, and the mind picks exactly this moment to start moving fast. It runs the list, then runs it again. It opens a conversation from this afternoon and rewrites your half of it. There is a thought standing at the door that will not knock and will not leave. This is the mind that won’t switch off — the one that is somehow most awake when there is the least to do.

These are six short poems for a racing mind at night. They are not a technique and not a way to make the thinking stop — they are something slower to rest your attention on while it loses its grip on you. Read one. The mind can keep running if it wants to; you do not have to run with it.

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One — The Thought at the Door

The thought wants you to answer it tonight.
It says the matter cannot wait.
It is wrong about the hour.
You can leave it standing in the hall.
What it needs from you
the morning can give it better.

Two — The List That Reads Itself

The list reads itself out in the dark
as if saying it again will get it done.
It will not. Nothing on it
can be finished from this pillow.
Let it read to an empty room.
You have already left.

Three — The Loop

The same five minutes, played again,
and again, looking for a different end.
There isn’t one tonight.
The loop is not solving it —
it is only keeping you company
in the worst way it knows.

Four — Somewhere to Put It Down

Rest your attention here, on this line,
the way a hand rests on a rail.
The mind can race past if it likes.
You are holding still,
one short sentence at a time,
and the racing has to pass you to go on.

Five — The Dark Room Is on Your Side

The dark is not against you.
It asks for nothing back.
The mind made the noise, not the room.
The room is only holding the quiet
it has held every night,
waiting for you to notice it is there.

Six — Slower Than It

You cannot outrun the racing.
You can be slower than it.
One breath, then the one after.
The thoughts keep their pace;
you keep yours, lower and even,
until they are talking to no one.

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A racing mind does not usually stop because you told it to. It slows when it runs out of room — when there is something quieter and slower in the way. One short poem, read at the pace the words actually move, can be that slower thing. If the loop starts up again, the page is still here. And if you would rather close your eyes than keep them open on a screen, the poems are read aloud, slowly, in one calm voice.

A note from the Library: these poems are slow on purpose. They are something for the mind to hold that is quieter than its own list. — Zen Roots, published by Ledgerstone Press.

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