"Ode to Exhaustion"

Deep down in the bones,
below stretched muscle

and mind that can’t contain
another ounce of the world’s

work or worry, the body gives up
its sense of sinews and soul,

gives in to last-ditch denial
of sleep where something beyond

waking boundaries of burn-out
and the broken and weary-worn evaporates

into almost-forgotten levitation: you hovering
in another realm not here: depleted, restored.