Grabbing Forty Winks

Zzzzz.  Zzzzz.  Zzzzz.  Oh!  Excuse us!  You caught us napping!  We know that we're supposed to be blogging about poetry and bustling around the LMC, but we just had to take advantage of National Public Sleeping Day.  That's right, Poetry Paraders, somebody somewhere declared that on this day it is a-okay to grab forty winks in a public place: at our desks, in the cafeteria, in the frozen food aisle at King's, or at the gazebo by the Chatham train station, for example. When we grab forty winks,  we take a short nap-- usually not in bed-- so it's the perfect idiom to use on National Public Sleeping Day!  Today's first poem, by Jack Prelutsky, celebrates sleeping-- in bed-- and a sincere wish to grab more than forty winks: 

Please Let Me Sleep All Day Today

Please let me sleep all day today,

I need to stay in bed.

I'm hardly even half awake,

I'm sure my eyes are red.

I try and try to open them,

but can't remember how.

You say today is Saturday?

I'm getting up right now. 

When it comes to public sleeping, no creature in the animal kingdom does it better than the sloth, a shy, slow-moving mammal that spends most of its life hanging upside-down from rain forest tree branches. Sloths are nocturnal: they are most active at night, and they sleep-- in public!-- during the day.  Our next poem, written by American poet Theodore Roethke in 1950, uses rhythm, rhyme, and imagery to describe the drowsy, slow-moving public sleeper: 

The Sloth 

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his ear;
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird)
He will assume that you have Heard--

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He'll sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows. 

Today's final selection, an excerpt from The Nap Taker by Shel Silverstein, imagines what happens when we take a nap and someone wants us to give it back: 

No--I did not take a nap--
The nap--took--me
Off the bed and out the window
Far beyond the sea,
To a land where sleepy heads
Read only comic books
And lock their naps in iron safes
So that they can’t get took.... 

And so, Poetry Paraders, we (yawn) invite you to the LMC on this (yawn) National Public Sleeping day to (yawn) check out books about rain forest animals (591.3) and poetry (811).  If you find us (yawn) snoozing by the SMART board, dozing by the dictionary stand, or nodding off behind the circulation desk, please remember (yawn) to use inside voices in the LMC,  Zzzzz....