National Poetry Month, Day 2: "Insomnia" - Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop was one of the first poets I found on my own, instead of via a teacher or a project. She's also the first female poet I really got into, and this was the first of her poems that I found really moving. I used to pull all-nighters in my studio apartment and read this on breaks and brood about how true it was, and how awesome I was for appreciating it. Later I found that every other young female English major did the exact same thing.

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.