NIGHT FEEDING

Three in the morning:
you're curled on my shoulder

like a hermit crab out of its shell,
warm as a blanket out of the dryer

when I lift you down from your perch
your dark eyes are wide open

as a hind longs for water
my soul longs for sleep

but I pace the round carpet
until I can crawl into bed

praying that I get a whole hour
before you summon me with your cries

that call in equal measure
my milk and my tears

This week's prompt at ReadWritePoem is borrowed words. As it happens, several of these are words which were already rolling around in my head, so I grabbed the word cloud and this is what arose.

The fourth couplet is a play on Psalm 42 verse 1: "as a hind longs for water, so my heart longs for You, God." No disrespect to the psalmist is intended.

To see what other folks wrote in response to this prompt, check out this week's Get Your Poem On post. (And to my fellow RWP'ers: my apologies for not being able to get to your poems and read them and leave comments at this moment! My computer time is awfully limited. Speaking of which, I think I hear Drew now...)